Health insurers charge different amounts for same policy: Consumer assoc.

Almost all health insurers in the Netherlands have so-called "clone policies" among their offer, consumers' association Consumentenbond warns. These are policies from the same provider that have different names, but only actually differ in price. That's not allowed in the Netherlands, but insurers get away with it by offering these policies through subsidiaries or intermediaries, according to the association, RTL Nieuws reports.

The Consumentenbond investigated the thousands of policies offered by the over 50 health insurers in the Netherlands. They found that there is a total of 58 basic health insurance policies under different names on offer in the Netherlands. But the association could only find actual differences in 31 of these policies. And these were minor differences - for example, differences in the care providers linked to the policies.

According to the association, they've been warning the government and health insurers about this problem for years.