Dutch health insurance, explained in English

The cover is identical. The price is not.

This is the part that surprises most people who move here. The basic package is defined by the government, not by the insurer. A GP visit, hospital care, prescription medicines: the list is the same whichever company you pick. So when you compare Dutch health insurers you are not comparing cover, you are comparing price, service and hospital contracts.

That also means a cheaper policy is not a worse policy in terms of what you are entitled to. It can mean a narrower choice of hospitals, or that you have to pay part of the bill yourself if you go to a clinic your insurer has no contract with.

Anything beyond the basic package, such as dental care for adults, physiotherapy or glasses, is additional insurance (aanvullende verzekering). That is a separate, voluntary product, and insurers are allowed to refuse you for it.

The deductible is the bit that catches people out

Besides your monthly premium there is a deductible called the eigen risico. In 2026 it is €385. That is not an extra bill: it is the amount of care you pay for yourself in a year before your insurer starts reimbursing.

For 2027 you will see two different numbers quoted, and both are real. €400 is what you get if only the automatic inflation adjustment goes ahead, because the freeze on the deductible ends at the end of 2026. €455 is that same adjustment plus an extra €55 from a bill that has not been voted on yet. Anyone quoting one single figure for 2027 is guessing.

Not all care counts towards it. Visiting your GP is free of the deductible, and so is maternity care and district nursing. The trap is what happens next: blood tests your GP orders and medicines your GP prescribes do count. So the visit is free and the follow-up is not.

Children under 18 pay no deductible at all, and no premium for the basic package.

You can raise the deductible on purpose

You may raise your deductible voluntarily, in steps of €100, €200, €300, €400, €500, up to €500 on top of the compulsory amount. In return the insurer lowers your monthly premium.

Whether that is a good idea is simple arithmetic, not a matter of opinion. You win if the premium discount over twelve months is larger than the extra risk you take on. You lose in any year you need more care than you expected. We show that calculation on the Dutch page about the voluntary deductible.

One thing people get wrong: raising it does nothing at all in a year where you already use up the compulsory deductible and nothing more. The extra only bites once you pass the compulsory amount.

Switching happens once a year, and the date is fixed

You can cancel your current policy up to and including 31 december. If you do, you then have until 1 februari to arrange a new one, and it applies retroactively from 1 januari. Miss that window and you are stuck with your policy for another year.

You do not have to cancel yourself. If you take out a new policy by the deadline, the new insurer cancels the old one for you.

For the basic package every insurer must accept you, whatever your age or health. For additional insurance they are allowed to say no, or to ask you medical questions first.

Premiums for the coming year are not out yet

Insurers publish their premium for the following year by 12 November at the latest. Until then nobody knows what you will pay. The Dutch Ministry of Health has published an expectation of about €169 a month for 2027, roughly €12.5 more than this year, but that is a forecast and not a price you can buy.

Depending on your income you may be entitled to a healthcare allowance (zorgtoeslag) that reduces the net cost. For 2027 the expected maximum for a single person is around €140 a month. What you actually get depends on your income and assets and is calculated by the Dutch tax office.

We will put a comparison here once the real premiums are published. We would rather show you nothing than a number we made up.

Where our figures come from

Every amount on this page comes from the Dutch government, not from us and not from another comparison site. We never publish a figure we cannot point at a source for. Where something is not yet decided, such as the deductible for 2027, we say so instead of picking one number.

We earn money when someone takes out a policy through a link on this site. That does not change what we write: the basic package is identical by law at every insurer, so there is nothing for us to tilt.