Wspolplacenie bezposrednie w bazowym systemie zabezpieczenia zdrowotnego – doswiadczenia Szwajcarii. (Direct cost sharing in the basic health system – Swiss experience.)

Governments of many countries are continually faced with the challenge of reducing the expenditure on health, especially their public part. Owing to that shifting part of the financing directly to patients is observed. One of the mechanisms used is cost sharing with patients. Many countries have already introduced some form of cost sharing. However those solutions differ with regard to services and countries. Given current financial situation of many economies and growing demand for high-quality health care cost sharing is likely to be used more extensively. Therefore, it seems interesting to get to know health systems with many years’ experience in functioning of cost sharing. Swiss health system the paper is devoted to could be one of such examples. The paper starts with general presentation of direct and indirect forms of patients’ cost sharing. The second part describes the main principles of Swiss health system and the last one provides an overview of the forms and extent cost sharing in Switzerland.