“Public expenditure on health consists of three parts (Figs. 3.5 and 3.6):

“• MHI [Mandatory Health Insurance], which was the largest purchaser in the health system in 2012, spending 35.8% of THE [Total Health Expenditure] (right-hand side of Fig. 3.5). Revenues of MHI companies (left-hand side of Fig. 3.5) come from premiums paid by MHI policy-holders (30.0% of THE) and/or subsidies for premiums (5.8% of THE) paid out of budgets of the Confederation and cantons.

“• Other social insurance (SI), which accounted for 10.7% of THE. The SI consists of the health-related parts of the accident insurance (UV/AA), the old-age insurance (AHV/AVS), the disability insurance (IV/AI), the military insurance (MV/AM) and the complementary payments of AHV-IV/AVS-AI (EL/PC). Revenues of the different SI schemes again come from premiums paid by policy-holders (4.4%) and subsidies (6.3%) paid out of public budgets.

“• Direct spending by government, which was the second most important source of spending, accounting for 20.3% of THE in 2012. Direct spending is financed from taxes collected by the Confederation, cantons and municipalities, and excludes the expenditure for premiums and other health-related subsidies. The largest part of these expenses were made by cantons (17.2%), followed by municipalities (2.9%) and by the Confederation (0.2%).

“Private expenditure amounted to 33.2% of THE in 2012 and consisted of three expenditure categories:

“• Direct payments, which were responsible for about two thirds of all private expenditure on health (or 20.5% of THE) in 2012. This also includes other private funding for health (mostly donations and bequests to non-governmental organizations; NGOs), which has always accounted for around 1.0% of THE since 1995.

“• Cost sharing for services covered by MHI (5.5%) and VHI [Voluntary Health Insurance] (0.1%), together accounting for 5.5% of THE.

“• VHI, which accounted for only 7.2% of THE in 2012, because of a continuous decline from 12.4% in 1995 and 9.0% in 2005.

“Comparing the share of public expenditure on health out of THE to other countries (Fig. 3.7) shows that Switzerland is one of the countries with the lowest share of public expenditure on health in the Western European Region: 66% of THE stems from public sources. The most important reason for this is that an exceptionally large proportion of health care is financed by OOP [Out Of Pocket] payments (25.9% of THE in 2013).”

Source: De Pietro C, Camenzind P, Sturny I, Crivelli L, Edwards-Garavoglia S, Spranger A, Wittenbecher F, Quentin W. Switzerland: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2015; 17(4):1–288. http://www.euro.who.int/en/about-us/partners/observatory/publications/health-system-reviews-hits/full-list-of-country-hits/switzerland-hit-2015