Switzerland Today

Hello from Bern,

The demise of Credit Suisse has not been good for the country’s collective stress level, to say the least. And that’s bad news for those who don’t have a family doctor – according to the Swiss Medical Association, general practitioners are as hard as ever to find.

Let’s hope both the banking system and the medical profession are in better health where you live than it is here.

© Keystone / Georgios Kefalas

In the News: Lawmakers talk bank merger and electricity consumers brace for price hikes

• Lawmakers are set to debate the rushed takeover of Credit Suisse by rival bank UBS, after a sufficient number of them – over a quarter of members of the House of Representatives – requested an extraordinary session on the matter. The debate is planned for mid-April.
• After a small trial in Basel last year, a pilot project for the controlled sale of cannabis in the city of Zurichhas been approved by health authorities. The products will be available for sale to control groups in pharmacies and social clubs starting next August.
• Households and businesses in Switzerland are bracing themselves as the price of electricity is set to surge in 2024. Swissgrid announced the cost of connecting to the grid next year will double for the average household. Among other factors to blame are prices on the European electricity markets that continue to rise.

© Keystone / Ennio Leanza

The ripple effects of the Credit Suisse collapse

If you’re still wrapping your head around what’s happened to the Swiss banking system in the last few days, imagine how confusing it must be for your kids. Reto Lipp, a business editor at Swiss public television SRF, starts his kid-friendly explanation this way: “Credit Suisse basically had bad bosses who in recent years did not invest the money very well. The bank also helped clients in America hide their tax money, and that’s not allowed.”

For this reason, investors and clients have been turning away from the bank, Lipp adds.

Indeed various cantonal and private banks contacted by French-language radio RTSExternal link say that for months now, they’ve been welcoming new clients who’ve defected from Credit Suisse or getting enquiries from potential new clients about making a switch. But the trend accelerated last week, apparently. The banks won’t divulge exact numbers, though – they say they don’t want to create any panic.

The impact is also being felt at a human level inside these banks, which report a sense of sadness hovering over employees as their sector absorbs the shock of the takeover.

On the other hand, managers can scratch “bank worker shortage” from their list of worries: current Credit Suisse employees are already sending in their applications to fill job vacancies.

© Keystone / Alessandro Della Valle

More women doctors – but still not enough family physicians – in Switzerland

The Swiss Medical Association’s annual look at the state of the professionExternal link reveals an increase in the number of women doctors active in Switzerland: they now represent 45.7% of the workforce, up from 37.5% in 2012. In all 40,000 doctors were practising in Switzerland in 2022 – that’s a marginal improvement (+2%) over the previous year in terms of full-time equivalents.

But this small gain is hardly reassuring as shortages persist. There are currently 0.8 family doctors per 1,000 inhabitants – the ideal would be 1 per 1,000. A lack of care leads to additional health costs, the association warns.

If that’s not enough to strike fear in the minds of the nation’s hypochondriacs, doctors are also clocking in fewer hours on the job: the average work week was 47.7 hours in 2022, down from 49.3 ten years ago. Maybe this has to do with the fact that the country’s doctors are also getting older: one in two doctors is 50 years old or older, and one in four is 60 or older.

No surprise, then, that the Alpine state still relies heavily on recruiting from abroad: nearly 40% of practising doctors got their degrees outside Switzerland. Among OECD countries, only Israel has a higher proportion of foreign doctors.