It depends on one thing only: if your compulsory accident insurance also covers accidents in your private life, suspending accident cover in your KVG/LAMal basic insurance avoids paying twice for the same risk. If it does not cover them, suspending it opens a gap in your cover. The answer therefore comes down to your employment situation, not to your preference.
The legal condition, in one sentence
The KVG/LAMal allows accident cover to be suspended as long as the insured person is fully covered for that risk, on a compulsory basis, under the accident insurance law (UVG/LAA). The deciding word is “fully”: being an employee is not enough; non-occupational accidents — at the weekend, during sport, at home — must be covered too.
The deciding threshold: eight hours with the same employer
The accident insurance ordinance (UVV/OLAA) insures part-time workers against non-occupational accidents from eight hours a week with one employer. Below that, cover extends only to occupational accidents, with the journey between home and the workplace then counting as an occupational accident.
The hours are counted “with one employer”, in the words of the ordinance, not by adding several jobs together. Read literally, three jobs of four hours a week with three different employers therefore do not cross the threshold with any of the three. The federal authorities publish no explicit position on holding several employers: if that is your situation, have your cover confirmed by the accident insurer concerned rather than deciding the question yourself.
Where you stand
- Employee working eight hours a week or more with the same employer: occupational and non-occupational accidents covered by the UVG/LAA. The condition for suspension is met.
- Employee below the threshold: occupational accidents remain covered, and the journey between home and work then counts as an occupational accident; it is non-occupational accidents that are not covered. Since cover is not full, the FOPH considers that these people do not meet the condition for suspending accident cover with their health insurer.
- Not gainfully employed — children, homemakers, students, retirees: no UVG/LAA cover, and the FOPH explicitly refers these people to compulsory health insurance for the accident risk.
- Unemployed and receiving benefits: compulsorily insured with Suva, non-occupational accidents included, for as long as the conditions of unemployment insurance are met.
The last case deserves emphasis, because it is easy to count yourself by mistake among people who are not gainfully employed. A jobseeker receiving benefits is not one of them: their accident cover does exist. It is funded partly by a deduction from the benefit — the law caps this deduction at two thirds of the premium — with the rest paid by unemployment insurance; no premium is deducted for waiting days and suspension days.
The law also sets when this cover ends: it ceases at the end of the 31st day after the last day on which the person meets the conditions of unemployment insurance or receives a benefit. It is that date — the end of entitlement to benefits, not the start of unemployment — that should prompt you to reconsider a suspension.
What is worth checking before you request it
- The number of weekly hours actually agreed, employer by employer.
- That non-occupational accidents are indeed included in the cover taken out by the employer: the “NBU/AANP” deduction on your payslip is the most common sign of it.
- What happens if your working hours fall or a job ends. The law provides that basic insurance takes the risk back as soon as UVG/LAA cover ceases wholly or partly, but your health insurer must know about your situation.
When in doubt, the answer cannot be guessed. Your employer's accident insurer can confirm the exact extent of your cover, and it is that confirmation — rather than a general rule read somewhere — that allows you to decide.