Cost assumption by health insurance | 24.4.2026
Complementary medicine: what will health insurance cover?
Complementary and alternative medicine is treatment that falls outside of mainstream healthcare. It includes therapies such as acupuncture, homeopathy or osteopathy . Under certain conditions, basic health insurance in Switzerland covers five specific treatment methods in the area of complementary and alternative medicine. With a good supplementary health insurance product, you can be covered for many more.
What is complementary medicine?
Complementary medicine refers to a diverse group of therapies that are intended to be used alongside, but not as a replacement for, conventional medicine. Complementary medicine incorporates body, mind, lifestyle and environmental factors into the treatment.
Complementary medicine aims to boost the body’s natural ability to heal itself while providing the most non-invasive treatment for symptoms.
Some of the most well-known forms of complementary medicine are acupuncture, homeopathy, phytotherapy (herbal medicine), anthroposophic medicine and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).
Many doctors combine conventional and complementary medicine, particularly for chronic conditions, pain or stress.
According to the KAM-Barometer survey commissioned by the Empirical Medicine Register (EMR), approximately two-thirds of the Swiss population have tried complementary or alternative medicine.
