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Comment by mrsuprawsm | Hacker News Reader

The cost of healthcare in the Netherlands is however extremely affordable, which I think is the most important difference between Europe and the US.

In NL, you pay ~€110/month annually, with a max out-of-pocket cost of €385 per year. So, maximum €1600 cost annually.

People with a low income, students, etc, get approximately the same amount of money as a cash benefit to cover these costs.

I'm not saying this is good, it isn't, healthcare costs should be covered by general taxation like in the UK. But it's not very expensive.

(It also seems pretty stupid in the Netherlands, because you have to pay an insurer for your health insurance, but they all charge pretty much the same, since it's highly regulated, and then out of pocket costs are capped. Seems much simpler to eliminate the insurance companies and let the state administer costs and pocket the profit that the insurance companies are extracting)

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>In NL, you pay ~€110/month annually, with a max out-of-pocket cost of €385 per year. So, maximum €1600 cost annually.

My provider, CZ, charges ~€150/month with max-out-of-pocket ~€385. If you get the full ~€850 out of pocket then your monthly payment drops to ~€110/month.

I would guess that you are also including "anvullende verzekeringen", additional cover for e.g. dental/glasses/physiotherapy etc in your premium, because if you check a price-comparison site [1], then the majority of insurance policies are in the €110 - €120 range.

The extra insurance (dental/glasses etc) is also a bit of a scam, because the amount covered is often less than or just equal to the premiums that you pay in a given year, and you'd need to also be buying a new pair of glasses every year, always visiting the dentist, and so on. It's probably more economical to simply pay these costs out of pocket.

[1] https://www.independer.nl/zorgverzekering/intro.aspx

There is a similar system in Germany. As someone who is from the UK and now living in Germany, I would say the health system is 5x better in Germany, so the highly regulated but private insurance and healthcare system seems to do a lot for improving things.

That's far too little evidence. German health care has always been good.

As someone also from the UK and now living in NL, I would say that the health system is definitely better in NL, seems like higher quality of care and somewhat smaller waiting times, but definitely not 5x better, maybe 1.3x.

Worth noting that Germany also spends more on healthcare than the UK does: $6,646 per capita vs $4,653 per capita in 2019 [0]. That's quite a significant difference.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

When I was living in NL with no income, after subsidy the cost was around 10 euros.

The arrangement was indeed strange though with the government paying me to pay the insurance company and then for the employed there was then a further health care tax amount.

> the government paying me to pay the insurance company

it gives you the direct control over which insurer to buy, thus encouraging market competition.

If the gov't controlled which insurer got paid instead, there'd be a lot more lobbying and "corruption" and backroom deals which would not benefit the citizenry.

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