insured by one of the many private-sector health insurance companies. About 32% of tile population have private medical insurance. A fourth funding source is the government itself and, finally, there are the out-of-pocket payments by the patient. This division of financing by different sources can have implications when you want to change the provision of care. Homo care, for instance, is mostly paid for by the Exceptional Medical Expenses Act, while hospital care is mostly financed through insurance money. This is a source for problems when you want to shift care from the hospital to the home situation.
As you can see, the Health Insurance Act and the Exceptional Medical Insurance Act account for the biggest part of financing health care. Private insurances account for 15%, while the government and the out-of-pocket payments account for 20% together.
screen 14 (public funding and private provision)
The next feature is the public funding and the private provision of care. Just now we have discussed the public funding of health care. As for the private provision: as in some other countries in Western Europe, the Netherlands have a long tradition of non-governmental health care. Most of the facilities providing care for the handicapped or mentally ill, and most hospitals in Holland have private origins, even though they receive most, if not all, of their funding from public financing sources. The same goes for the family doctors: the majority of the family doctors and also of the dentists is in private practice. This tradition of private provision and public funding has positive and negative outcomes. On the one hand, it has brought strong public support for health care and it has resulted in a well-developed system of health services. On the other hand, it is also one of the causes of cost control problems. This is because the government has to control coats that arc not made by the government itself, but
