It’s the end of the year and that means thinking an possibly stressing about health insurance. Do I stay with the insurance company I was with this year, or does another company suits me better? So many companies to choose from…It’s a yearly competition between companies now.
Before 2006 it was simple: when you had low income, you were on health insurance fund. When you had a high(er) income, you paid for private insurance. Because people get older and are considered more prone to health issues and out of fear that healthcare would become unaffordable, our government implemented another system. As of 2006, our healthcare system became privatised. Now we all have to have a basic insurance, which is income independent, so whether you can afford it or not.
We also have what is called ‘your own risk’ of a few hundred euro yearly, which is increasing almost every year. People on low income, will avoid healthcare, even when they need it badly because of this.
Then we can choose additional insurance. This is also a problem when you are on low income. What is covered, or partly covered by the additional insurance, varies per company and per year.
In 2019, it is getting worse in my opinion. Most of what is called ‘alternative medicine’ or ‘complementary medicine’, like Ayurveda or energetic healing, used to be partly covered by the additional insurance. Three of the big insurance companies decided as of 2019, they won’t cover it anymore and is now calling these age old medical techniques ‘bullshit’. Specially when you look at Chinese medicine, this is in contrary with WHO. And mind you, Ayurveda as well as energetic healing and Chinese medicine do a lot on prevention, which will actually lówer healthcare costs. Plys, a lot of people turn to these types of medicine, when regular Western medicine can’t do anything for them anymore. Eastern and energetic medicine look holistic and are aiming to treat the rootcause of the problem, whereas Western regular medicine mostly treats symptoms with all kind of harsh methods.
To me it is mindblowing that these types of healing are now called ‘bullshit’. Their worth is proven for over thousands of years and regular Western medicine is maybe only 200 years old. We have access to Western, Eastern en energetic healing, all have good and not so good sides, so why not take the best of all ways of thinking and work together?
The Dutch healthcare system is considered one of the best, but obviously, it had its financial limits. That is why phenomena as ‘medical crowdfunding’ and tv-programs such as ‘Your money or my life’ are becoming more and more common. So seen, money determines whether you stay alive or not.
Also, if people die while on ‘alternative care’ like homeopathy, energy treatments, Ayurveda and so on, the stories are blown out of proportion, it’s all over the news, but we (almost) never hear of the 16.000 people that die whilst on regular Western care, due to mistakes that could have been prevented. Imagine: that is almost 44 people a day! Now, thát is scary to me.
This year, I could have easily been one of those 16.000 people, due to an untimely release out of the hospital with a perforated colon.
When I had my radical hysterectomy in September 2009, I was admitted into the hospital the night before surgery. I had a talk with the anesthesiologist, had an anema and a shave, had a sleep and was whisked off to the theatre early morning. Relatively stressless, right? When I had my sigmoid/fistula resection last October, I had to shave and do the enema at home, have the pre-op drinks in the middle of the night and I had to be on the hospital ward at 7 o’clock in the morning. It saved the cost of a hospitalbed fot that one night, but it caused a lot of stress in an already stressful time. Also, I found the pre-op screening totally ridiculous this time around: I had a talk with the assistent anesthesiology, then a talk with the anesthesiologist himself, a talk with a woman who plans the admission, then a talk with a specialised nurse admission who gave me the pre-op drinks, then a noseswab on an other ward, then to the hospital pharmacy for the enema. The whole ‘procedure’ took me almost 3 hours and I was pooped. My thinking is: the more people on one case, the higher the risk of human mistakes…And last but not least: if you are keen on cutting costs, I think the cut should be done here…
We love to know how healthcare is your country is organised and does it work? What are your experiences?
December 2018
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