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RE: Hospital experience: the good and the bad
There are 6 within a proximity of 5-15 minutes drive from my home.
That's a lot of hospital! The Dutch must have a very good health care system. Is it all covered by the social security system?
The ear infection issue sounds horrible, it must have been hell for you during that time
0.00105205 BEE
Yes there are many hospital around and that number does not include speciality hospitals or clinics. The way the system works is that every adults must purchase a basic insurance from a private insurance company. Of course, people can opt out of this but they must show evidence that have sufficient savings to cover their own health costs. I think the percentage of people who do this is negligible.
Children (under 18) automatically gets covered for everything via their parents basic insurance plans.
Below a certain income level individual can apply for allowance from the government.
In additional, adults can add optional packages to their basic insurance package - dental, eye care, physiotherapy etc.
In the end, it is a still a universal health care system with subsidies from the government.
Therefore, the maternity care that I received is available to all as it is a part of the basic insurance package.
The ear infection (in both ears) was hell indeed - the pain was undescribable.
@livinguktaiwan - not sure whether you saw my long response. It was a while ago.
I'm sorry for the delayed response @momogrow. When I first saw your response, I was travelling so was going to respond afterwards but then forgot. Then I saw your prompt two weeks ago, but every time I wanted to reply I had to do my curation work first, so never got round to it, and it dragged on and on 😅 till this morning
It's interesting to see that the Dutch health system is very different from the UK one, which as you probably know, we have the NHS which the state is very proud of. Are all the hospitals and clinics in the Netherlands also run privately or are they operated by the state but users have to pay via their insurance? Sorry for all the questions 😀
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