My love–hate relationship with Dutch healthcare

Looking at the medical expenses in 2017 for my youngest son, I was a bit shocked... a total of over €38000! That doesn't even include the average €150 we spend a month on medication that is not covered by the government.

I believe the Dutch healthcare system is one of the best in the world, although it also has many flaws. On "my" side of things, as a parent of a patient, there was no way I could have payed that amount of money to give my son what he needs. I'm really grateful for that!

On the "other" side, I see my (future) wife, Hive account@mlvanderwaal, struggling with the system as a healthcare professional (she's a midwife). Every year she's being forced to do more work and provide better quality care, for less and less money. I believe this to be unsustainable, and I dearly hope that my children will be able to keep enjoying the benefits of such a system.

I believe the root cause of the imbalance is the privatization of different parts of the healthcare system, while other parts remain under semi-control of the government, but I guess that's politics...