1.0Faces Onlinehttps://faces-online.nl/en/Asset Financialshttps://faces-online.nl/en/author/elleke-bender/rich600338<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="MSO4nd19QF"><a href="https://faces-online.nl/en/dutch-welfare-state/">The Dutch Welfare State</a></blockquote><iframe sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" src="https://faces-online.nl/en/dutch-welfare-state/embed/#?secret=MSO4nd19QF" width="600" height="338" title="“The Dutch Welfare State” — Faces Online" data-secret="MSO4nd19QF" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" class="wp-embedded-content"></iframe><script type="text/javascript"> /* <![CDATA[ */ /*! This file is auto-generated */ !function(d,l){"use strict";l.querySelector&&d.addEventListener&&"undefined"!=typeof URL&&(d.wp=d.wp||{},d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage||(d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage=function(e){var t=e.data;if((t||t.secret||t.message||t.value)&&!/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/.test(t.secret)){for(var s,r,n,a=l.querySelectorAll('iframe[data-secret="'+t.secret+'"]'),o=l.querySelectorAll('blockquote[data-secret="'+t.secret+'"]'),c=new RegExp("^https?:$","i"),i=0;i<o.length;i++)o[i].style.display="none";for(i=0;i<a.length;i++)s=a[i],e.source===s.contentWindow&&(s.removeAttribute("style"),"height"===t.message?(1e3<(r=parseInt(t.value,10))?r=1e3:~~r<200&&(r=200),s.height=r):"link"===t.message&&(r=new URL(s.getAttribute("src")),n=new URL(t.value),c.test(n.protocol))&&n.host===r.host&&l.activeElement===s&&(d.top.location.href=t.value))}},d.addEventListener("message",d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage,!1),l.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",function(){for(var e,t,s=l.querySelectorAll("iframe.wp-embedded-content"),r=0;r<s.length;r++)(t=(e=s[r]).getAttribute("data-secret"))||(t=Math.random().toString(36).substring(2,12),e.src+="#?secret="+t,e.setAttribute("data-secret",t)),e.contentWindow.postMessage({message:"ready",secret:t},"*")},!1)))}(window,document); //# sourceURL=https://faces-online.nl/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js /* ]]> */ </script> http://faces-online.nl/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Faces-banner-ter-vervanging.jpg1200628The Healthcare System The healthcare is one of the areas that have to deal with major changes. Rising costs and an aging population require policy solutions, such as competition between hospitals and changing the position of insurers.  The current healthcare system in the Netherlands is subject to considerable change, partly because of the explosive growth of healthcare costs. The healthcare is the biggest cost center of the Dutch government with almost 75 billion Euros, which is 30% of the government expenditures. On October 19 2012, the coalition of VVD and  PvdA came to an agreement. The coalition Rutte II budget cuts are 5 billion Euros on health care. Also in April 2013 a social agreement and a healthcare agreement have been concluded. As of January 2014 a couple of things have been changed in the healthcare system.  The compulsory own risk is 360 Euros, a wider compensation for psychological help. National income arrangements for financial compensation for the chronically ill and disabled will be made by the municipalities. Advances in medical technology and more assertive citizens will result in making two basic choices. The first is the concern of healthcare-solidarity: the balance between uniform healthcare for everyone and more differentiated care with room for personal responsibility and self-control. The second concerns the risk-solidarity: the balance between ensuring all risks as much as possible and assuring the necessity of stopping the overuse of healthcare by personal payments. By combining the two considerations, four future options arise of the prevention healthcare, curative healthcare and the elderly healthcare. These worlds will differ in robustness: a rapid increase in expenditures from new medical technology is easier to cope with in a world where more responsibility lies with the consumer and to which the relevant care is equal to the individual preferences. A world with a strong collective interpretation of healthcare suffers from the increasing price of solidarity more than a world in which the healthcare connects with the individual preferences. Freedom of choice helps to achieve the latter but then there could be a strained relationship with a good functioning insurance market. Furnishing of the healthcare in the future requires therefore customization and depends on the economic conditions and social preferences. The Pension System The current Dutch pension system consists of three pillars. The AOW is the first pillar of the pension system. It is the basic income needed to make ends meet, everyone who lives and works in the Netherlands automatically saves for his or her pension. The second pillar is pension from the employer. About 90% of the employers have a supplementary pension. This results in receiving an additional payment on top of the state pension when you retire. Individual insurance constitutes the third pillar. Examples of this individual insurance are annuities and single premium life insurance. These savings for an additional pension are attractive for tax purposes. This method is beneficial because people can then retire earlier or have more money available when they retire. The pension costs are rising because of the aging Dutch population. Furthermore, the current pension system is very sensitive to fluctuations in the financial markets. Therefore, the AOW-age is going up and the government is adjusting the rules for pension funds and pension entitlements. According to the plans of the present government, the AOW-age will be 66 years in 2018 and 67 years in 2021. This comes with a new regulation, called “the Witteveenkader’’, where the age for supplementary pensions under favorable tax conditions moves to the age of 67. Due to the economic crisis, investments declined in value and the coverage of many pension funds has decreased. The coverage should be 105%, but a lot of pension funds do not reach this level. The people thus get lower pensions than they expected and were promised. The impact of these new pension contracts for the participants of the pension funds is difficult to assess at this time.  The pension agreements so far give a basic idea, butmany details have not been completed and will be determined by the social partners at local levels. A balanced distribution between the generations is possible when the design of the pension contracts contains sufficient interest for both the young and the elderly. Three factors can work to a disadvantage of young people: a too favorable valuation of the liabilities, the reduction of the buffer structure, and the incentive to take additional risks in order to reduce the value of the liabilities. This brings, more than in the old system, the risk that the bill will be pushed forward and that the young people of today will suffer the disadvantages. The Labor Market Also, the labor market in the Netherlands is a major problem, which requires solutions. Currently, the percentage of unemployed people who are able to work is 8.5% while this was 5.4% just two years ago. This effect works two ways. On the one hand, the people who are unemployed are sitting at home and cannot help the Netherlands get rid of the crisis. On the other, those people have the unemployment law, create a lot of costs for society that originate when 8.5% of the labor market is unemployed. Another problem in the current labor market is that there are jobs available, but the right people for those jobs are not. There is a matching problem in the labor market because a lot of people do not have the education they need to get those available jobs. This matching problem is partly caused by the technological advances which cause the demand for middle-educated people to decrease. Besides that, the decrease is caused by the competition of low wage countries. Reformations are required to solve these problems, but again, the political battles are blocking this. The political parties cannot come to a consensus, which only encourages the crisis and strengthens the effects. There has already been one reform in the labor market, the shortening of the unemployment law period to one and a half year. This helps cutting