New medical insurance locks out undocumented

"Overall," says lawyer Florian Hübner of the Groupe Sida Genève, "Switzerland’s new medical insurance law, known as LAMAL, improves the situation of people living with HIV."

Indeed, by making medical insurance an obligation by law regardless of the health of the person, insurance companies can no longer refuse to take onboard people living with HIV/AIDS.

However, the law makes legal residency a precondition for signing on to a medical insurance scheme. Insurance companies now have to check the immigration status of applicants.

A few cantons already had similar legislation, but the LAMAL is a federal law.

Hübner believes the law’s consequences for the undocumented were never considered while drafting the law.

Hübner recalls an expert seminar he attended about the new law. When he asked about where the law would leave the undocumented, he says, "there was silence. They looked at each other, and then a federal judge told me that... it was a good question."

The first to suffer the consequences of the new law have been children.

In the 1980s, immigrant rights activists and educationalists in Switzerland won a major victory when it was clearly established that all children, regardless of their immigration status, had a right to enroll in public schools.

Now, children are once again being denied schooling, this time because of the perverse effect of Switzerland’s new medical insurance law, known as LAMAL, which makes legal residence a precondition for signing on to a medical insurance scheme.

In the canton of Vaud last Fall, one headmaster requested that a family submit medical insurance documents for their child. The family contacted several medical insurance companies, but every one refused, citing the new LAMAL.

The Vaud legislation which requires proof of medical insurance is due to be modified, but the LAMAL’s discriminatory statutes remain.nmunited kingdom