"Health disaster" is in the making in the Netherlands, health funds warn government

“A health disaster is in the making,” 22 health funds warned in a manifesto presented to outgoing Minister Pia Dijkstra for Medical Care on Monday. There are large health disparities in the Netherlands, Dutch people spend less of their lives in good health, more people have chronic conditions, and 40 percent of young people don’t exercise enough. Change this by making health the starting point for all government policy, said the funds, which include KWF, the Brain Foundation, and the Diabetes Fund, NOS reports.

According to the manifesto, people with lower incomes live eight years less than people with high incomes. They also live 24 years shorter in good health. Living unhealthily is still easier and cheaper than a healthy lifestyle. Poor health costs society a lot of money and increases the already widespread shortages. “This development will not stop by itself,” the funds said in their manifesto.

Next year, the 22 collaborating health funds plan to organize a health summit with the government, business world, scientists, healthcare, and patient organizations. They want to make concrete agreements about promoting health. The funds want attention to their concerns, “but at the same time, they want to take action and take the lead,” chairman Hans Chirmbeck said.

According to the World Health Organization, four major industries have ensured that it is cheaper, easier, and more attractive to have an unhealthy lifestyle, health economics professor Jochen Mierau told NOS. The tobacco, alcohol, processed food, and fossil fuel industries are to blame. “They have a revenue model that creates health problems,” Mierau said.

He mentioned smoking as an example. “There is no reason to smoke, yet we see in the Netherlands that the number of smokers is slowly rising again. We had restricted tobacco advertising and sales, but we subsequently worked around this and reintroduced it with vaping.” Food manufacturers also make unhealthy food addictive, Mierau said. “Products are made in such a way that we get a craving for them. It seems to come from within us, but it is very consciously developed so that we get an addictive feeling from it.”

The new coalition’s main lines agreement mentions the prevention of health problems. The PVV, VVD, NSC, and BBB want to make prevention “more central” by focusing on things like “sport and exercise, improving health, reducing health differences, and managing the demand for care.”