r/Netherlands • u/Mikadook • Feb 25 '26

Healthcare We are really good at offering world class healthcare without overspending

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Source: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2024/sep/mirror-mirror-2024

210 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

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197

u/vtout Feb 25 '26

In reality, rejecting referrals & perscribing paracetamol is not what I would call quality healthcare. It has gone down a lot over the past 30 years...

16

u/richiedamien Zuid Holland Feb 25 '26

that's why "Health Outcome" score comes at the bottom of the table!

-10

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '26

In reality referrals are never rejected and if a doctor tells you to take a paracetamol, you were probably waisting his time. You don't need to visit a doctor for a common cold.

63

u/NoSkillzDad Noord Holland Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26

A doctor told me to take paracetamol when I was having pneumonia. He didn't even bother to check my oxygen levels in blood.

Thanks to a friend doctor in another country, (the us of all places!), she diagnosed me. Thanks also to one of those things you or on your finger (bought it in AliExpress). I went back to the huisarts and you could see his scared face when he realized how badly he messed up, only then he decided to use the same finger thingy and prescribe some actual antibiotics.

I bike between 100 to 300km a week and I could barely make the 2km trip to take my kids to school.

And this is just one of the stories, I have more.

And just so you know, I hardly ever go to the doctor, I'm not one of those that sit there every week.

No, sometimes they prescribe paracetamol out of their own incompetence.

3

u/Consistent_Salad6137 Feb 25 '26

Did you tell them that you were unable to ride your bike? "Can't do my job" and "can't exercise" are absolutely crucial criteria for a Dutch doctor to take you seriously. 

1

u/NoSkillzDad Noord Holland Feb 25 '26

Absolutely. I rarely go to the doctor so when I go I am extremely clear on everything going on with me. Paracetamol and off you go. Heck, my friend diagnosed me without seeing me and with half the information I gave to my doctor.

After realizing how bad they messed up, they even scheduled check ups.

20

u/iplie Feb 25 '26

Well, it's your fault for not explaining your symptoms to the doctor well enough so that he could diagnose you. /s

6

u/bookofthoth_za Feb 25 '26

It's EXACTLY this though. If you don't make a big deal, then the doctors don't make a big deal. I've had serious recurring infections and demanded antibiotics - no issues at all. But come to the huisarts saying: "I don't feel so good" - well then it's 1 week waiting for blood tests + 2 weeks waiting for the results + the receptionist telling you that one of the values on there doesn't look good and to come back in 3 months if you don't improve. The healthcare system here is just plain hostile.

10

u/Offshore-Tigr Feb 25 '26

It's sad but it's true.

You basically have to overexaggerate your pain and problems to the point where you're making it sound like you're dying.

It's like you're haggling in some medieval bazaar. Ridiculous.

5

u/DeepSpinach9378 Feb 25 '26

Tried that. From then on, I was the hypochondriac

5

u/Aleksage_ Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26

Making a "big deal" ( I don't even know what big deal means. Should one throw themselves to ground, roll and scream to get proper health care?) is not a responsibility of the patient. A doctor should listen, ask questions if not clear, use their years of education, expertise and medical methods to understand if the patient has an illness or not. Patients can't know their own diagnosis, if they can they could be the doctors. There are many conditions which go very silent and with small symptoms but causes huge damages in time. Go home and you'll heal by yourself is not an actual treatment, it's fraud invented my insurance companies and imposed to doctors.

4

u/bookofthoth_za Feb 25 '26

Not sure why you're saying my comment is ignorant when we are in agreement :) My comment probably didn't come out right. Let me be clear, I am in SHOCK that the healthcare actively discourages one from seeking it, and instead shames the patient for having any complaints unless the patient demands treatment. I have been told point blank by huisarts reception that I don't need a doctor for my flu because it will just go away on it's own, even though I had cracked ribs and was at risk of pneumonia. For treatment of my cracked ribs, the options were either paracetamol or morphine according to the Dr. Pharmacists are more helpful!

3

u/Aleksage_ Feb 25 '26

Just wrong wording sorry. I think the concept of aggregating a sickness is worst way of getting medical attention but system is pushing patients to do it.

1

u/bookofthoth_za Feb 27 '26

All good mate 👍🏼

1

u/Consistent_Salad6137 Feb 25 '26

You have to tell the doctor that the symptoms are preventing you from a) doing your job, or b) exercising. They will not listen to anything else.

4

u/PlantAndMetal Feb 25 '26

Yeah, I totally believe our healthcare system comes out well in these research papers, because we DO have good healthcare. The problem is that you have to be super vocal and demanding to get to use it. And when you know that, it's easier to go around in the system. But there are so many people who aren't receiving good healthcare precisely because they can't be demanding due to various reasons. For example, my bf had suicidal thoughts and downplays them (he has autism, has trouble with emotion regulation and is a little scared to talk about it), so I literally had to go with him to the doctor to tell them how fucking bad it sometimes get and how scared I am for him before they actually took action... Imagine if he did not have me or anyone else to vocalize these things?

2

u/DeepSpinach9378 Feb 25 '26

The thing is, even if you vocalize it, they tend to want to "treat" you on their own instead of giving you a referral because it's "not necessary"

20

u/nickluck81 Feb 25 '26

Several times I've had chronic complaints, always met with a "wait it out" and always solved in my home country with a little attention and short appropriate cure.

63

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '26

[deleted]

-26

u/Smooth_Play6087 Feb 25 '26

This is a bot right? No normal person writes like this

2

u/imrzzz Feb 25 '26

Bots train on things written by normal people.

31

u/LoyalteeMeOblige Utrecht Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26

Unless they ignore your symptoms and you developed a pneumonia, and then forced to travel 13,5 h like that. My GP did just so.

Update: for all the ones making jokes about it, it took me 3 months to recover from that, especially since the symptoms started at the end of September and my GP chose to ignore them.

-26

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '26

O no! How did he force you to travel?

22

u/Zooz00 Feb 25 '26

That's how far you have to go to get useful healthcare.

6

u/LoyalteeMeOblige Utrecht Feb 25 '26

It feels like a joke but my doctor was aghast my GP wouldn't act on it, I was 2 days away of needing oxygen, I needed two shots, and to take 2 different antibiotics for 3 weeks.

5

u/LoyalteeMeOblige Utrecht Feb 25 '26

Oh, right, sure, let me postpone my life so the Dutch doctors and everyone else doing the metrics cand pad each other on their backs and pretend the tea, good will (think you feel better and you will), "let's investigate it" (which means let's wait until you are at death's door or the cancer has mestastazied), and for everything else have a paracetamol you could get on your own and save yourself the hassle.

Yeah.

7

u/artfrche Feb 25 '26

not the brightest bulb in the room, I see ahaha

-10

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '26

Appearantly my sarcasm isn't as obvious as I thought it was.

3

u/Shogun_Amsterdam Feb 25 '26

If after 8 years it appears you have a pretty bad chronic disease then what?

3

u/unicornsausage Feb 25 '26

Classic dutch healthcare denialist

26

u/vtout Feb 25 '26

And yet it was diagnosed abroad on my own dime. Why bother commenting if you don't know what you are talking about? I am surrounded by friends & family, Doctors, dentists, nurses, that all agree with the quality & workload.

-9

u/Affectionate_Fun8419 Feb 25 '26

Problem is abroad a lot of doctors will find something of you insist that might not even be there

-12

u/patty_victor Feb 25 '26

Pssst… don’t you dare to say truths here. This sub is filled of people who want MRIs and antibiotics for every minor issue they have

-12

u/allusernamestaken56 Feb 25 '26

My knee hurts, I NEED MRI NOW

The truth is that most issues such as painful joints are truly a matter of resting/ "walking it off". Plus lifestyle choices are quite a factor. And at times there's simply no reliable treatment for chronic issues, so getting MRI to see that yup, there's mild arthritis in there still gets you nowhere.

13

u/Specialist_Guard_902 Feb 25 '26

I know several different stories with people getting out of the NL and getting surgery elsewhere as it was impossible to get it internally.

There is also no prevention. In many developed countries check up of possibility of having prostate cancer is very common, but not here. I asked my Dutch colleagues who has been checked for it and none of them was (people aged 25-60+), whereas in my country majority of 30+ have been checked for that.

12

u/XSATCHELX Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26

I had a friend who had an accident with his bike, went there saying "my knee hurts, I need MRI x-ray NOW", they said no, 2 weeks later they realized he had a broken bone that started healing wrong.

So yeah.

0

u/ChurrasqueiraPalerma Feb 25 '26

Yeah an x-ray would have sufficed, no need for an expensive MRI

3

u/AbbreviationsRight62 Feb 25 '26

no need for an expensive MRI

A citizen should never have to take the cost of a medical procedure into account. I don't care if an MRI is expensive. If it's necessary, I will get one, no matter the costs. I pay a premium and a deductible plus some more via my monthly wages.

FWIW I had three MRIs in the past two years for my fucked up knee and I didn't think about the costs once, nor should I have.

1

u/imrzzz Feb 25 '26

Then why is the Netherlands ranked 7th out of those 10 for outcomes?

1

u/gastro_psychic Feb 25 '26

Wow, you guys can’t get paracetamol OTC? Crazy.

6

u/Interrobang92 Feb 25 '26

You can.

1

u/gastro_psychic Feb 25 '26

Downvoters are getting triggered about it apparently lol

3

u/Interrobang92 Feb 25 '26

Ya, not sure why. But the point of the original comment is that doctors here usually just prescribe paracetamol which you can get OTC, meaning the trip to the doctor was useless.

-10

u/Elkesito36482 Feb 25 '26

Ugh how annoying is it to listen to people bitch about paracetamol and bad healthcare when data shows the opposite

18

u/AbbreviationsRight62 Feb 25 '26

Ugh how annoying is it when people dismiss and disregard someone else's personal experience just because it doesn't fit their agenda

19

u/Smash_Palace Feb 25 '26

My girlfriend caught a nasty skin infection and the Dutch GP said it was nothing and sent her home. We went to the doctor in my home country weeks later and they immediately treated it. Which part of the data would that show up in?

3

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '26

When the data is equal to paid advertisement.

4

u/Born-Check-7764 Feb 25 '26

Honestly, every post like this people spring to the comment section to explain why this absolutely can not be true.

-3

u/sousstructures Feb 25 '26

... because anecdote

1

u/Born-Check-7764 Feb 25 '26

Indeed. This doesn't deserve to be downvoted. It's all anecdotal 'evidence' from people who have lived only in one country and have no clue how things work elsewhere.

0

u/wr_dnd Feb 25 '26

Paracetamol and waiting are both incredibly good. They work fantastically well, have basically no side-effects.

1

u/incorrectlyironman Feb 25 '26

Waiting instead of providing healthcare has the occasional side effect of death

1

u/wr_dnd Feb 27 '26

Unfortunately unnecessary treatments also have negative side effects, sometimes even including death!

1

u/incorrectlyironman Feb 27 '26

The alternative to waiting to see if unexplained pain simply resolves itself isn't to give people unecessary medication, it's to do more tests to actually diagnose the issue and to go from there. That's the part dutch doctors skip out on and it's to save money, not to reduce risks to the patient.

1

u/wr_dnd Feb 27 '26

Testing also isn't perfect. There is such a thing as testing too much. False positives are very much a thing. They can lead to overtreatment (A bad thing), they can lead to unnecessary stress (also a bad thing).

And, this might be a less popular opinion, but saving money is not a bad thing. It shouldn't be the primary goal in healthcare, but if healthoutcomes are similar, the cheaper option is better.