Since 2006, every individual who works or lives in The Netherlands is obliged to have basic health insurance. At the time, an exception was made for foreign students below the age of thirty. They often already have an insurance with sufficient coverage from the country of origin.
However, this does not work well for exchange students and students of private institutions such as Neyenrode. This is because they are not officially registered in the education execution body of the government. Therefore, the Health Care Insurance Board cannot check their student status. This leads to the situation that these students need to take out an insurance or pay a fine of 350 euros. It is possible to object, but so far, only in Dutch.
This is very indecent and harms the Dutch knowledge economy, according to various opposition parties. D66 requests the Minister of Public Health Schippers to take appropriate actions. The party wants her to prevent that students who follow the rules receive confusing and unfair formal notices.
However, Schippers declared that the current administrative systems do not allow prevention of this matter. As a compromise, the Health Care Insurance Board and the Social Insurance Bank are investigating how this group can be made as small as possible.
In addition to that, Schippers promised in a letter to the House of Representatives, that an English form will be made available online on short notice. Furthermore, the Dutch letters from the Health Care Insurance Board will contain an English paragraph.
For now, Schippers believes that foreign students who are not registered, should inform the Health Care Insurance Board by themselves that they do not need insurance. The board will then make sure that they do not receive official notices.
Mariska Roersen
