Cured but uninsurable: the hidden financial burden of surviving cancer in Switzerland

A campaign to allow a limited "Right to Be Forgotten" is trying to provide better financial security for thousands of former cancer patients. Keystone

More people are surviving cancer than ever before. But in Switzerland a historical diagnosis can follow former patients for years, especially when they try to take out income protection insurance. A campaign to allow a limited "Right to Be Forgotten" is trying to provide better financial security for thousands.

When cancer treatment ends, patients hope to return to a “normal life” – work, perhaps a new job, and making plans for the future. Yet for many, despite their physical recovery, the illness resurfaces in an unexpected place: the health questionnaire of a private insurer. One ticked box can mean a refusal, sweeping exclusions, or premiums that put coverage – and financial security – out of reach.

The “Right to Be Forgotten” (RTBF) is meant to prevent that from happening. At its core is a simple idea: after a defined period without a relapse, a historical cancer diagnosis should no longer be taken into account when assessing applications for insurance and other financial products.

Several European countries have already introduced versions of the “Right to Be Forgotten” for cancer survivors, but in Switzerland’s private insurance market, no such protection exists. That could now change if a motionExternal link currently before parliament becomes law.

The motion proposes limiting the disclosure period for past illnesses to five years when people apply for individual sickness daily allowance insurance, a critical form of income protection for the self-employed and those without corporate cover.

What is a parliamentary motion?

A parliamentary motion is an instrument that requires the Swiss Federal Council, or executive body, to draft legislation or take a specific measure. It must be approved by both chambers (House of Representatives and Senate). If parliament later passes the new legislation, it can still be challenged by a national referendum: opponents must collect 50,000 valid signatures within 100 days of the publication of the new law to force a nationwide vote.

“People don’t understand how easy it is to drop below the poverty line after a diagnosis, even after treatment ends,” said Aline Descloux, a policy specialist at the Swiss Cancer League, the umbrella organisation for cantonal cancer charities.

“You can be fired while sick. Then, when you’re cured and want to work again, you’re locked out of coverage,” she said. “That exposes you to huge financial risks if you get sick again – not necessarily with cancer, but with anything.”

Europe’s right to be forgotten rules

Several European countries have now adopted some form of the “Right to Be Forgotten”. Waiting periods and scope vary: some frameworks focus mainly on credit-linked insurance, while others extend further.

In BelgiumExternal link, for example, the “Right to Be Forgotten” also applies to guaranteed income insurance, which protects a person’s salary during a long-term illness. Once a patient has been in remission for five years, insurers can no longer use their medical past to deny coverage or inflate costs.

At the EU level, new consumer credit rulesExternal link adopted in 2023 include a Right to be forgotten for insurance linked to consumer loans, requiring member states to set a time limit – capped at 15 years from the end of treatment – after which a cancer diagnosis can no longer be used.

Switzerland’s problem

“In Switzerland, it’s difficult to tackle the whole right to be forgotten question in one big legislative push. The system is too fragmented,” Descloux said. “For now the Swiss Cancer League has decided to focus on one specific part of the problem, the one where we see the greatest need for action: income protection.”

While many working-age people are covered through employer-arranged daily allowance policies, for the self‑employed, freelancers, or those without strong occupational benefits, financial stability often depends on whether they can still buy individual coverage.

“If you’re self-employed or work in a small company, it might be almost impossible to get daily allowance insurance after a cancer diagnosis,” Descloux said.

Income Protection in Switzerland

When illness prevents a person from working, income protection usually begins outside the state system. Most employees are covered by an employer-arranged sickness daily allowance (Krankentaggeld / indemnités journalières), which typically replaces 80% of their salary for up to 720 days.

These policies are regulated under two separate legal frameworks:
Private insurance: regulated by the Insurance Contract Act, this is the dominant market standard. It gives insurers broad freedom to ask health questions, refuse applicants, or impose permanent medical exclusions (often called “reservations”) for pre-existing conditions.
Social-style insurance: regulated by the Health Insurance Act, this optional framework provides more standardised rules. Crucially, insurers cannot refuse applicants, and any medical exclusions must expire after five years – a built-in “Right to be Forgotten”.

Despite the protections offered by the social-style insurance  it has become a niche product. Because theit  does not require insurers to offer benefits that fully cover a high earner’s loss of income, most people seeking robust coverage turn to the private market.

Since 1996, the private market has surged from CHF1.16 billion to roughly CHF 5.1 billion in annual premiums. Meanwhile, the social-style insurance market has withered, dropping from CHF834 million to just CHF241 million over the same period.

If a person’s incapacity becomes permanent or requires long-term rehabilitation, they must then transition from these short-term allowances to the federal disability insurance system.

A cancer patient now in remission told Swissinfo she was dismissed while on sick leave. Her employer’s daily allowance insurance continued to pay 80% of her salary, but when she later changed jobs, two new pension funds imposed partial exclusions based on her answers to their health questionnaires.

Matti Aapro, a medical oncologist at the Swiss Genolier Cancer Center and past president of the European Cancer Organisation, said he sees the same pattern repeatedly: medical progress reduces risk for many patients, but underwriting rules often move more slowly. “In some cases, we know the remission will probably last forever. But insurers only see a ticked box”, said Aapro.

There is no official list of insurance providers, but industry and regulatory listings suggest around three to four dozen companies offer some form of sickness daily allowance cover. Changing providers can sometimes lead to a fairer policy, Aapro said: “But with clearer, time-limited rules on what insurers can ask and use, much of this could be avoided.”

The Swiss government saysExternal link there is no data for self-employed people with daily allowance cover and there are no publicly available statistics for the number of applicants refused coverage. Switzerland has an estimatedExternal link 450,000 cancer survivors.

Time for change

The Swiss Cancer League is campaigning to change the Insurance Contract Act and asked Centre Party parliamentarian Benjamin Roduit – an advocate for closing gaps in Swiss social and health protections, particularly for the self-employed – to sponsor a motion in parliament targeting health questionnaires for individuals seeking private sickness daily allowance insurance.

The motionExternal link, submitted in December 2025, caps medical-history disclosure at five years and prevents insurers from factoring in certain preventive or health-preserving treatments (such as hormone therapies used after thyroid cancer and some breast cancers).

The proposal is not limited to cancer; it includes any previous illness and certain accident-related health impairments.

“In Switzerland, the issue [of income protection] is very often framed as a matter of individual responsibility, implying that everyone should be able to take out private insurance,” Roduit wrote in an email to Swissinfo. “However, in these specific cases, it is very difficult to be accepted by an insurer.”

In February, the Federal Council recommended rejecting the motion, although parliament can still accept it – which would oblige the government to draft legislation. The government said a blanket five-year cap raises “practical and actuarial” problems because illnesses vary widely and some conditions affect risk for longer. It warned the limit could distort the risk pool and push up premiums for everyone, “contrary to the principles of private insurance.” 

Why insurers oppose the right to be forgotten

Insurers argue that medical information is essential to price risk fairly and to avoid “adverse selection,” where people at higher risk are more likely to buy cover, pushing up premiums for everyone.

A 2023 reportExternal link by the University of St. Gallen’s Institute of Insurance Economics noted that right to be forgotten rules can entail significant transaction costs and that, in a competitive market, those costs ultimately show up in premiums.

It noted there are still no reliable studies showing that people without pre-existing conditions are willing, in real purchase situations, to pay more to fund cross-subsidisation towards high-risk individuals.

Swiss Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurers, has warnedExternal link that “Right to Be Forgotten” frameworks can represent “a deviation from evidence-based risk assessment and pricing”, arguing that risk classification remains a key tool to keep insurance affordable and available. The company declined to respond to questions from Swissinfo about its position.

Supporters of the “Right to Be Forgotten” say these risks are overstated. “Contrary to dire predictions from the insurance industry, the market in France didn’t collapse after the introduction of right to be forgotten,” said Dr Françoise Meunier, founder of the European initiativeExternal link Ending Discrimination Against Cancer Survivors.

The policy is a low-cost way to restore normal life after cancer, she said. “It doesn’t cost anything to the government and it helps a lot of citizens. The risk for insurers is minimal – in France providers even voluntarily decided to lower the limit from ten to five years.”

One-size-fits-all?

One reason the debate is so hard to settle is that cancer covers very different risk profiles. For insurers, that complexity is difficult to translate into clear, workable rules. For doctors and survivors, it is frustrating to see a past diagnosis treated as a permanent risk.

Aapro said that insurers should rely on transparent, regularly updated “reference grids” based on medical evidence. For each cancer type, stage and treatment pathway, the grid would indicate after how many years without relapse any extra risk becomes negligible, and therefore a past diagnosis should no longer justify exclusions or refusals.

Versions of such grids already exist elsewhere in European countries that have “Right to Be Forgotten” arrangements. Switzerland is only starting to build that kind of evidence base.

An ongoing studyExternal link at the University of Geneva, led by epidemiologist Robin Schaffar, will evaluate long-term “excess mortality,” a statistical way of calculating when survivors’ mortality returns to that of the general population. “The aim is to provide solid population data,” Schaffar says. “So when the discussion becomes more concrete, it can rely on real figures and not just emotions.”

Join the debate:

Edited by Nerys Avery/vm/gw