2004-04-21 Aankondiging seminar prof. dr. W. van de Ven

Subject:           Seminar 26.04.04
Date:              Wed, 21 Apr 2004 16:41:51 +0200
Organization:       ErasmusMC Rotterdam
To:              undisclosed-recipients: ; 
 

Dear colleagues, 

On Monday April 26th, Wynand van de Ven, professor of Health Insurance at the institute of Health Policy and Management (iBMG, ), will give a seminar on "Health Care Reforms in the Netherlands".  A summary of the seminar is given below. 

You are all kindly invited to participate in this meeting which will be held in Colloquiumzaal K, 12.00 - 13.00 h. 

Kind regards, 
on behalf of the seminar committee
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Health Care Reforms in the Netherlands 

In this Seminar major aspects of the Dutch health care reform will be discussed. The key 
challenge of these reforms, initiated by the reform proposals of the Dekker-Committee in 
1987, is to improve the incentives for efficiency while maintaining solidarity. The last 15 
years good progress has been made with the reforms, in particular with respect to 
outpatient care. The next 15 years the reform efforts will focus on inpatient care. 
In this Seminar major reform issues will be discussed, such as the risk equalization 
system for insurers, cost-based prices for hospitals/physicians, competition policy, 
abolishing all differences between sickness fund and private health insurance, yes/no for- 
profit hospitals and insurers, consumer information, and, last but not least, European 
regulation. 

According to the declaration of policy of the Dutch government that took office in May 
2003, “The central planning by government has failed and will be replaced by regulated 
competition as soon as justifiable”. With these last 4 words, government on the one hand 
stresses the urgent need for reform and on the other hand indicates that not all 
preconditions for regulated competition are yet fulfilled. Only time will tell whether, after 
15 years of health care reform toward regulated competition, the halfway point has 
already been passed.