A guide to health insurance in the Netherlands

With a refund policy (restitutiepolis) you can go to any care provider of your liking such as any independent treatment centre (ZBC). In the Netherlands, we call this ‘free choice of health care’. How does it work? After receiving the bill you can send it directly to your health insurer or you can claim the costs afterwards. Your healthcare insurer will always reimburse the costs if the treatment is covered by your health insurance unless the bill is unreasonably high compared to other healthcare providers in the Netherlands.

An in-kind policy (naturapolis) is also referred to as ‘contracted care’. This means that when visiting a contracted independent treatment centre (ZBC), your health insurer will reimburse all of the health costs. If you visit a non-contracted independent treatment centre (ZBC) you will have to pay a part of the medical costs yourself. This is on average approximately 30 percent of the total costs.

At a.s.r. all correspondence is in Dutch. But there's no reason to worry if you don't speak this language as all of our healthcare advisors are able and willing to answer your questions and information requests in English.