A guide for non-swiss
One thing I am noticing a lot when doing tax returns for expats is that they are paying way too much for their health insurance premiums here. Many have the lowest franchise of CHF 300, maybe CHF 500 and I can well imagine that this is because this was the advice they received when first arriving in Switzerland. The lowest franchise means the highest premium. If you have health costs per person of less than around CHF 1900 per year, then you are paying too much.
In Switzerland it only makes sense to either choose the highest franchise or the lowest, don’t bother with the ones in between. The highest is perfectly fine for most normally healthy adults. The lowest is what to choose if you anticipate a lot of health costs.
The excellent website The Poor Swiss has a comprehensive guide to Health insurance and it can be found here. This will tell you all you need to know and more. There is also a quick guide to see how much you could be saving under How to Swiss
Under the official Government site you can compare premiums across different Health insurance companies. The site is available in german, french and italian.
A quick note about tax and your health insurance. At canton and federal level there is a limit on how much you can deduct for health insurance premiums. Most people pay over that limit in premiums, therefore it makes sense to keep premiums as low as possible. In addition, for all health costs that you have to pay yourself, if they exceed 5% of your taxable income, they are also tax deductible. For low earners this can be beneficial. High earners are unlikely to spend enough to be able to make this deduction, but it is worth knowing about. Costs incurred for dentist treatment, glasses etc are also included in this. If you are coeliac then you can also claim CHF 2500 flat fee. However you may be asked by the tax office to justify the coeliac diagnosis.