The federal government pays for asylum applications Georgians want to benefit from the Swiss healthcare system
Since the beginning of the year, the federal government has been recording which asylum seekers incur very high healthcare costs. Without exception, such applications come from seriously ill people from Georgia. There are reasons for this.
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- Asylum applications from Georgian nationals are usually rejected: people try anyway to gain access to the Swiss healthcare system.
- Federal statistics show that asylum seekers who incur healthcare costs of more than CHF 10,000 per person come exclusively from Georgia.
- These are individual cases who are usually seriously ill.
They have no prospect of success and apply for asylum anyway - because they hope to receive medical help. The federal government is now registering asylum seekers who incur "very high" healthcare costs: According to SRF , these are exclusively individual cases from Georgia.
The phenomenon of asylum applications being made for medical reasons is not new. However, no data has been available to date: The State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) wanted clarity.
The SEM speaks of "very high healthcare costs" when the treatment costs exceed CHF 10,000 per person. Since the beginning of the year, "around a dozen" asylum seekers have exceeded this threshold. They all come from one country: Georgia.
Confederation and cantons cover the costs
According to the law, asylum seekers are required to have health insurance from the first day of the asylum procedure. If the costs for premiums, deductibles and co-payments cannot be met by the asylum seekers themselves, the federal government and cantons pay - even for medically complex cases.
"Some of these people are really very ill," SEM Head of Communications Daniel Bach told SRF, referring to "a few, sometimes tragic cases". These included a cancer patient and a coma patient for whom the relatives applied for asylum.
Apparently word has got around in Georgia that healthcare in Switzerland is very good, Bach suspects. It is relatively easy for Georgian citizens to gain access to the Swiss healthcare system by applying for asylum. They are allowed to stay in the Schengen area, to which Switzerland belongs, for three months without a visa.
