In the news this morning is an item about debts among young people in the Netherlands. There appears to be an annual increase of 1 to 2% and the debts mostly concern the monthly obligatory health insurance premiums.

Ironic – and highly revealing – is that many young adults in the Netherlands do not apply for the related monthly receivable tax credits because they are concerned about having to pay it all back later. That would get them into much greater difficulty.

The Dutch tax authorities messed up big time with childcare tax credits when an algorithm started identifying people, notably those with foreign-sounding names or foreign backgrounds or foreign parents, as scammers. This resulted in huge financial difficulties for many. Families were even ripped apart over it, children sometimes removed from the home.

So here we have another clear indication that how a government rules a country is directly related to the financial challenges that its citizens deal with.

Blacklisting people who apply for exemptions and sharing those details with a range of other organization – both also done in the Netherlands – is another way to deter people whose financial circumstances actually do make them qualify for exemptions.

They rarely need more roadblocks, after all. They’re usually trying to clear roadblocks.

What also often goes wrong is that organizations such as health insurance companies do not inform their customers of threshold they should seek to avoid. The news item states that when health insurance clients are 6 months behind on their obligatory insurance premiums (with or without health care costs payments?), the insurers have to blacklist them and refer them to a government organization called the CAK (a collection agency, basically) and their customers’ health insurance premiums go up.

How is this helpful, Dutch government? Shouldn’t you, by contrast, for example start doing things like waive people’s “eigen risico” – if they have high healthcare costs but low incomes – to help them get back on track instead of push them into greater financial difficulty?

And instead of the tax credits that many people are now too terrified of to apply for, couldn’t you just give them an income-related discount on their premiums, based on the previous year’s income so that there won’t be any fear of a later clawback?

I’m also interested in why the premiums and “eigen risico” went up whereas those healthcare premium tax credits went down this year. Are the country’s coffers empty? Apparently…

The “eigen risico” will be applied differently next year. Instead of it being a one-time reimbursement threshold, there will then be a lower threshold each time someone needs care for which the “eigen risico” applies. Would this mean that people with certain medical condition will end up paying a fortune toward their healthcare? No, because the threshold stays in place. https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2023/01/19/vanaf-2025-maximaal-150-euro-eigen-risico-per-behandeling-in-medisch-specialistische-zorg

Should these things really be changing all the time? It’s a little bit like the “derdelanders” position among refugees that fled from Ukraine, haphazardly applied and constantly changing decisions that give people little to hold on to. It’s also a bit like future pension amounts being determined by how the stock market is doing instead of how capable the fund managers at the pensions funds are, isn’t it?

Is long-term vision a thing of the past?

In the UK, with its massive inequality, it’s particularly low wages and a punitive benefits regimen – benefits that are relatively low in the first place – that keep people trapped in poverty. That’s where the Netherlands may be going next?

Inequality in the Netherlands is increasing. How can I tell? The opinions and interests of people with lower incomes are increasingly dismissed as irrelevant.

When inequality continues to grow, the sort of thing you end up with too is that landlords dump their rubbish where tenants are living, drying their laundry and having their barbecues with everyone shrugging about it and considering it normal. Because if you rent a home, your opinions and interests don’t matter much, particularly if your income is low.

https://nos.nl/artikel/2519693-meer-jongeren-met-schulden-vooral-zorgpremie-is-een-probleem