One in three Zeelanders find medical costs unaffordable: ‘I’d rather have heart medicine for my wife than new lower dentures for myself’

Not getting new teeth is actually avoiding care due to costs, which means avoiding care. They don’t know how often this happens at CZ, Zeeland’s biggest insurance company. But it happens. “We receive these signals through GPs and others. But we don’t have statistics about it,” said CZ spokesman Rik van Druten.

Van Truden explains how this is possible. Suppose a patient is referred to a dermatologist by his GP because of a spot. But he didn’t go because he had to pay for part of the hospital visit himself.

There is no automatic check in the GP system to call whether the patient is actually going. In such a case, according to Van Drouten, care is avoided. But it is not registered.

General practitioners and hospitals in Zeeland say they don’t see many Zeelanders paying for healthcare. ZorgSaam’s spokesperson René Maas: “There is always a small proportion of people who see a bail on their doorstep after reminders and checks, but fortunately it is not a large group and there is no significant increase in this number.”

Maas doesn’t know exactly whether hospital patients also avoid care: “We can’t see if care is avoided, but what we’ve seen over the years is that people don’t start the care process in the fall, but work through the year. Exclusion.”

Arjen van den Dorpel says on behalf of Zeeland dentists that he has not noticed Zeelanders avoiding care. “Oral care has been fairly stable for decades, with 80 percent visiting the dentist regularly. This is the highest percentage in the world despite individual contributions.”