Comparing Dutch health insurers: naturapolis or restitutiepolis

The short version

• The medical cover is identical at every insurer, so the real decision is the policy type: naturapolis or restitutiepolis, with the combinatiepolis in between.
• The restitutiepolis is no longer sold. Insurers converted them into combinatiepolissen, so advice telling you to buy one has gone stale.
• What is left turns on one question: does the clinic you walk into have a contract with your insurer? If not, your insurer decides what it pays and the remainder is yours.
• A provider without a contract has to tell you before your first appointment, and tell you its price. Ask if nobody volunteers it.
• If no contracted provider can see you in time, ask for zorgbemiddeling. Your insurer then has to find one who can, or pay for a provider outside its network.

Picking a Dutch health insurer feels like it should matter more than it does, and it matters somewhere other than where most people look. The basisverzekering, the standard package, is designed by the government and is the same everywhere. What differs is the list of doctors, clinics and hospitals your insurer has signed a contract with.

That list is what the policy type means in practice, and it is where unexpected bills come from. Walk into a clinic your insurer has no contract with and part of the invoice stays with you, however ordinary the treatment was.

Naturapolis or restitutiepolis

Government.nl describes two policies on the Dutch market. An in-kind policy, the naturapolis, "covers care from care providers that have been contracted by your insurer": you pick from that list, and the provider bills your insurer directly. A combination policy, the combinatiepolis, pays contracted providers the same way, but if your provider has no contract "you will have to pay the costs up front" and can then claim all or part of it back.

Rijksoverheid names a third label you will meet while comparing. A naturapolis can be sold with restrictive conditions, meaning fewer contracted providers or lower reimbursements, and that is what a budgetpolis is. It is not a separate species. It is the same policy with a shorter list.

The restitutiepolis, which reimburses care wherever you choose to get it, is the one older English-language guidance still tells you to buy. It is not on the shelf any more.

What happens when your provider has no contract

You are not left with nothing. Article 13 of the Zorgverzekeringswet, the health insurance act, gives you a right to a reimbursement of the costs even when you go outside the network. The catch is in the same sentence: what you get is "een door de zorgverzekeraar te bepalen vergoeding", a reimbursement to be determined by the health insurer.

No percentage is fixed in law. What the law does require is that the insurer writes its calculation method into the model agreement, and that the method is the same for everyone in the same situation. So the number exists, it is knowable in advance, and it lives in your polisvoorwaarden, the policy conditions document nobody reads until the bill arrives.

There is a floor, but it is a soft one. Dutch case law imposes what Rijksoverheid calls the hinderpaalcriterium, the obstacle test: a reimbursement may be set low enough to push you towards contracted care, and not so low that it effectively blocks you from going elsewhere. That is a principle a court applies after the fact, not a percentage you can rely on beforehand.

Rijksoverheid's own advice before treatment at a zelfstandig behandelcentrum, an independent treatment centre, is to ask your insurer three things: whether the treatment is reimbursed at all, at what percentage, and how your compulsory eigen risico of €385 and any voluntary excess apply to it. Those three answers, in writing, are what turns a surprise into a decision.

How to check who your insurer has contracted

Every insurer publishes its polisvoorwaarden and premium for the following insurance year on its own website before 12 November, so the contract lists are readable before you have to decide anything. Rijksoverheid puts the instruction plainly: check whether the insurer has contracts with the care providers you want.

Four things are worth looking up by name before you sign, and they are not what a price comparison ranks on. Your huisarts, the Dutch general practitioner who refers you onward to almost everything else. The hospital closest to where you live. Any English-speaking practice you have already found, because those are frequently private and frequently outside a network. And any psychologist, physiotherapist or clinic you are already seeing, by name.

If you are already insured and want to move, the dates and the mechanics are on our Dutch health insurance guide.

When non-contracted care must be paid in full

A contract list is a limit on where you go, not a limit on whether you get care. Your insurer carries the zorgplicht, a legal duty to make care available within a reasonable time, and Rijksoverheid states the consequence directly: the insurer is responsible for zorgbemiddeling, care mediation, which means it has to offer an alternative or, where necessary, reimburse non-contracted care.

The NZa treats this as an open standard rather than a fixed procedure, and mediation generally happens on request. That is the practical point. Nobody rings you. You ring them, and you say the waiting time is too long and you would like zorgbemiddeling.

Mental health care is where this bites most often, and it is the area with published waiting-time norms. Rijksoverheid says you should be able to get a first appointment with a mental health provider, ggz in Dutch, within 4 weeks, and to start treatment within 10 weeks of that first contact. Once either is passed, that is the moment to ask for zorgbemiddeling rather than to keep waiting.

One more protection is worth knowing. If your insurer's contract with a provider ends while that provider is treating you, Article 13 says you keep the right to be treated by them at your insurer's expense. A contract expiring in December does not turn your ongoing treatment into a private bill in January.

Budget policies and bundled supplementary cover

A cheaper premium buys a shorter contract list. That is the whole trade, and whether it costs you anything depends on one thing: whether the providers you actually use sit on the list or off it.

Two things make the comparison harder than it looks. The NZa counted 58 policies on offer for 2026 and concluded that few of them are meaningfully different from each other, so a long results page is not the same as a real choice. And many insurers still practise koppelverkoop, tied selling: certain supplementary packages are available only alongside one specific basic policy. If you want dental or physiotherapy cover, that tie can end up choosing your basic policy for you, which is worth spotting before the premium does.

Since the medical cover is fixed by law, what you are actually comparing is the contract list, the reimbursement percentage for care outside it, the supplementary packages, and whether the insurer will deal with you in English. A comparison site is built to line those up side by side, which is more than a single insurer's own page can do.

Compare policies and contract lists

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Zorgwijzer

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Independer

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