Sick of your insurance?
Most international students who come to study in the Netherlands are legally not obligated to have Dutch health insurance. Still, many international students are falsely accused of being uninsured. They receive fines until they can prove they don’t need insurance.
Dutch law requires every citizen of the Netherlands to have adequate health insurance. In spite of this obligation, not everyone is insured. Approximately 150.000 people turned out to be without health insurance and received a letter from CVZ accordingly, but 15.000 of those people are international students living in the Netherlands. They come up wrongfully, because international students (under 30) are not obligated to have Dutch health insurance as long as they don’t receive an income from working or interning. Still they get letters demanding them to get insurance in the Netherlands. When they do not comply (or simply do not understand), they receive fines of 350 euros and bailiffs are sent to collect the money!
Univers talked about this problem to an expert in the field of ICT and identity management at Tilburg University, Martin Pekárek and Arthur Hayen, a health economist at TRANZO (Tilburg University’s ‘Scientific center for care and welfare).
Read more in the new Univers Magazine.
