FOR A THIRD OF THE SWISS – FROM THE CAULDRON READY TO BOIL… TO THE BROKEN BOWL…
In Switzerland, “one third” is no longer an abstract concept: it’s your neighbor, your coworker, your cousin who ditches toothpaste to pay for their LAMal.
In 2024, 36 % of LAMal policyholders “struggled to pay” their health bills, a record that smells dangerously like the insurers declaring war on taxpayers. At this rate, soon we’ll have to tax… the dying wish of the terminally ill.
But who cares? While families tighten their belts until they lose the last molecule of common sense, our illustrious elected officials feast at the banquet! A Federal Councilor pockets CHF 477,688.-- gross per year (plus CHF 30,000.-- in flat-rate expenses), inflation‑adjusted, equivalent to a Swiss minimum‑wage worker’s annual salary… times ten.
AND WHAT ABOUT THEIR LOBBYIST OVERLORDS?
At Swisscom, Urs Schaeppi carves out a loot of CHF 1.83 million per season, in full “transparency”… or so they say.
* The big bosses of the health insurers aren’t far behind:
* Andreas Schönenberger (Sanitas): CHF 976 433 in 2023
* Philomena Colatrella (CSS): CHF 851 678 in 2024
* Roman Sonderegger (Helsana): CHF 795 726 in 2024
No worries—these salaries are “well‑earned” for their highly lucrative services… And to top off the fiscal cherry, premiums have more than doubled since 2001 and just jumped another 8.7 % for 2025.
PICTURE THE SCENE…
An average household spends each year the equivalent of a round‑trip New York - Zurich ticket to… learn they can no longer afford care. Bravo!
In Bern, the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) plays deaf, hand‑in‑glove with the pharma giants. Roche, for instance, had no qualms about delisting Perjeta from reimbursable medicines when the FOPH dared to negotiate its price down.
Result: patients, doctors, and insurers pay the price while Roche’s shareholders split a cake at 85 % net margins.
As for Roche’s CEO, Thomas Schinecker, he pocketed CHF 10 million for his first full year in 2024 and his predecessor, Severin Schwan, now Chairman of the Board, still hauled in CHF 5.7 million in the same year.
THE AHV PENSIONS? A TRAGIC JOKE
In 2022, 12 % of AHV recipients couldn’t even cover basic needs and relied on supplementary benefits, living on just CHF 1 ,148.-- per month alone. Add to that nearly 15 % of seniors in precarious situations (200,000 people) who don’t dare ask for help—out of shame or ignorance.
In other words, over a quarter of Swiss retirees risk “starving to death” in the world’s most expensive country… Luckily, the strategy is crystal clear: By making care inaccessible to the frailest, we speed up natural attrition!
Fewer AHV pensions to finance, more room for “real” expenses (lobbies, bonuses, business trips, tens of millions in aid to corrupt regimes, etc.). And who cares if for CHF 10,000.-- worth of Perjeta you wait six weeks for insurer approval… as long as profits roll in?
For those with dreams and a few francs left, the mantra is already everywhere:
EXPATRIATION
THE RICH:
While small Swiss taxpayers are being sheared down to the marrow to fund pitiful pensions and infrastructure on steroids, the titans of finance are jumping ship—they've seen the writing on the wall.
Case in point: Renaud de Planta, a poster boy of Geneva's high finance, packing his bags for Italy to escape the insatiable claws of AVS and Swiss taxation, happily trading it all for a EUR 200,000 flat tax deal. Compare that to Geneva’s tax burden, which can gobble up to 71.5% of one’s income, according to experts—and that’s *before* even mentioning the socialist youth initiative aiming to slap a 50% tax on inheritances and donations above CHF 50 million. Full-blown leftist lunacy from which family businesses and the wealthy had better shield themselves—preemptively and aggressively!
Even Swiss bankers can’t afford Switzerland anymore.
EVERYONE ELSE:
Young grads, retirees seeking peace, committed freelancers, daring entrepreneurs, startups… ever more flee to kinder, gentler and above all, future‑proof, skies!
Let’s face it: you’re better off paying for care in Thailand or Portugal (for Europe‑lovers), where a “Premium” health plan costs one‑fourth to one‑eighth depending on age and country, rather than ending up on miserable “SPC services,” spending your days at a local drunks’ pub across from a 2 dl of “sharp‑white” while you await sweet release.
Yes, the future will be nomadic: foreign residents will swap their C permits for Asian business visas, and the Swiss will revert to their grand tradition of expatriation from the days when Switzerland was a poor little mountain country with almost no resources.
And if someday Switzerland wakes up, it’ll find a demographic desert and a welfare state in a morbid coma— all just to keep feeding a handful of fat cats. At least they’ll have kept their huge salaries…
THE FUTURE IN SWITZERLAND??
But hey, who’ll be left in Switzerland to keep getting fleeced, paying the pharaonic salaries of the privileged?
At this rate, Switzerland will soon have nothing but cows, tunnels, and mountains of bills to cry over; the rich will have already sailed off, Prosecco in hand, taxes in the rearview. And the middle class? They’re already in intensive care…
Sources :
https://www.tdg.ch/les-salaires-des-cadres-pourraient-etre-plafonnes-429587198847
https://www.mmm-online.com/news/what-did-big-pharma-ceos-get-paid-in-2024/
https://www.swissinfo.ch/ger/roche-ceo-schinecker-verdiente-2024-10%2C0-millionen-franken/88801097
https://www.tdg.ch/rentes-avs-en-chiffres-comment-les-retraites-se-portent-ils-132601590514
https://www.24heures.ch/geneve-un-grand-banquier-prive-part-setablir-en-litalie-433324827885
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