Yeah I pay around €80 / month but my "own risk" is around €885. That there's an "own risk" is not stupid, insurance that protects you from every little thing i

Yeah I pay around €80 / month but my "own risk" is around €885. That there's an "own risk" is not stupid, insurance that protects you from every little thing is necessarily more expensive than insurance that only protects you from an unlikely catastrophe. I save €17.50/month by setting the "own risk" to €885 instead of €385, a difference of €500. This means that if I don't use the health insurance for around 2.5 years I make up that difference and then get a "free" €17.50/month. I would set it even higher than €885 if I could, but at least with CZ that's the maximum they seem to offer. The difference in premiums is probably artificially low in The Netherlands since the market is so heavily regulated. I.e. if I expect to get "sick" I can just adjust the premiums yearly, e.g. women expecting to be pregnant do that, so it distorts the market. The insurer needs to eat the cost of your premium adjustment, even if you adjusted it because of a pre-existing condition or expected future medical cost. Also, you should be careful when bragging about the price of health insurance in The Netherlands. It's a hybrid privately paid & publicly paid system, so most of what you're paying for it is probably coming out of your taxes, not the premiums you pay to the insurer.