Legalities of Dutch health insurance

Sunday, 19 Mar 2006 | Leaving the Netherlands

A while back I did some basic research on health insurance for when I live abroad. I did talk to an insurance advisor shortly after writing that article and did some more research myself. However, I decided to postpone more research for a bit as things were to uncertain at that time. This was all due to the new health insurance system that was effectuated on January 1st of this year in Holland, which was very unclear to a lot of people (and in some ways still is).

Since we’ve got a couple of months of experience with the new laws in place, I decided it was time for me to have another look into the matter. I did some research, consulted the advisor I had spoken to before and called some government information lines to discuss my case.

The new system has something called a ‘base insurance’, which is basic healthcare that has the same coverage with all insurance companies. By law everybody is bound to have at least this type of insurance, but you can cover more by paying an extra premium. The problem for me was, would I still have this obligation when living abroad?

Turns out I don’t. As soon as my contract with my current employer is terminated, I actually even can’t be insured here anymore. “If your intent is to emigrate permanently (which it is) and you get no income from an employer based in the Netherlands, you are not entitled to using base insurance”. Which is all fine with me, since getting myself insured at a private firm is a lot cheaper than this base insurance is. So I was happy about that.

There is obviously still the option of insuring myself locally in Thailand. I’ll have to look into that a little more in the near future, perhaps in the first 3 months of me living there.