Dutch Health Insurance in 2027: What We Know

Every autumn the same three questions arrive: what will the premium be, is the deductible going up, and has anything been cut from the basic package. Every autumn most of the answers are not available yet.

This piece separates the three categories properly — what is settled law, what is a bill that has not passed, and what simply has not been published — and states the date we checked each one. It deliberately contains no insurer premium figures for 2027, because on the date of writing none existed; the only 2027 premium number here is the government’s budget average, labelled as such.

Disclosure: this article contains affiliate links to a.s.r., an approved partner of ours. If you take out a policy through one of those links we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

💡 Related: the January 2027 switching deadline, the eigen risico explained, what Dutch health insurance covers, healthcare allowance for expats, how to read a Dutch policy.

Confirmed: the Calendar Does Not Move

The dates are the most useful thing you can know in October, because they are fixed and everything else hangs off them.

Before 12 November. Rijksoverheid states that every year, before 12 November, health insurers publish the policy conditions and the accompanying premium for the coming year on their websites. This is the starting gun. Until it fires, no comparison is real.

Until 31 December. You can cancel your existing policy up to and including 31 December.

Until 1 February. You then have until 1 February to take out a new health insurance policy, and you are insured retroactively from 1 January.

That last one confuses people, so it is worth naming the mechanism: it is not a favour from the insurer. Article 5(5) of the Zorgverzekeringswet backdates a policy that begins within one month of a previous policy ending by cancellation on 1 January or after a change in the policy conditions, overriding the ordinary rule in the Civil Code. The gap between cancelling and choosing is built into the law.

Also fixed: the content of the basic package is determined by government, not by insurers, and is therefore identical wherever you buy it. What differs between policies is the type (naturapolis, budget policy or combinatiepolis; the restitutiepolis has not been sold since 2025), the contracted-provider network, the supplementary cover and the price — the subject of our guide to reading a Dutch policy.

The Deductible: €400 in the 2027 Budget

This is the change most people ask about, and there are two numbers in circulation.

What the government announced. In the 2027 budget presented on Prinsjesdag (15 September 2026), the government states: “Het verplicht eigen risico gaat in 2027 met de inflatie mee en stijgt van € 385 naar € 400” (rijksoverheid.nl, Prinsjesdag 2026, zorg; retrieved 4 October 2026). That rise comes from indexation alone.

Where €455 comes from. On 12 May 2026 the government submitted bill 36943 to the Tweede Kamer to raise the compulsory deductible by €60; the Tweede Kamer’s bill page says that would bring it to an expected €455 in 2027. The 2027 budget postpones that €60 by one year: “De verhoging van het eigen risico met 60 euro wordt met een jaar uitgesteld” (Miljoenennota 2027, measure 27, “Uitstel van verhoging eigen risico met 60 euro naar 2028”, rijksfinancien.nl, retrieved 4 October 2026). The bill remains formally before the Tweede Kamer; on 4 October 2026 its page showed it as scheduled for a plenary debate.

What that means for you. The government’s figure for 2027 is €400 as the compulsory deductible per adult; check your insurer’s 2027 policy conditions. Any voluntary excess (€100 to €500) comes on top of that. The government also expects the average premium to rise by €12.50 to an average of €169 a month in 2027, but that is a budget figure, not a price; insurers publish their own premiums before 12 November.

For what the deductible is and how it interacts with GP visits, prescriptions and referrals, see the eigen risico explainer.

Unknown: the 2027 Basic Package

On 4 October 2026 the Rijksoverheid page answering what changes in the basispakket still described 2026. Anyone telling you today what is being added or removed in 2027 is ahead of that source.

For calibration, the 2026 changes were three, and specific:

• Three stop-smoking programmes a year instead of one.
• Permanent cover for active exercise therapy for adults with severe axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA).
• A GP request for specialist advice, and an exploratory conversation in mental healthcare, no longer count towards your deductible.

Alongside those, the deductible stayed at €385 and the maximum personal contribution for medicines stayed at €250; the government has said that €250 maximum also applies in 2027.

The useful expectation to hold: the basic package is the same at every insurer, so a package change does not decide which insurer suits you. The things that do decide it — network, policy type, supplementary cover — are the ones you can already assess.

Unknown: Premiums, and Why Estimates Are Not Prices

No insurer had published a 2027 premium when this was written, and none is obliged to before 12 November 2026.

Two kinds of number circulate in the meantime, and neither is a price.

The first is the government’s own expectation of the average premium, announced on Prinsjesdag: up €12.50 to an average of €169 a month in 2027. It is a budget figure, not a commitment by any insurer.

The second is the estimate produced by commentators before publication. Each insurer sets its own premium, which is why nobody outside an insurer knows the answer in October.

We will not publish insurers’ 2027 premium figures on this site until insurers have published them. That includes premium ranges, “expect around X” phrasing, and any cheapest-insurer claim. The comparison becomes possible in mid-November and not before; the mechanics of doing it are in the step-by-step switching guide. Once insurers have published, our 2027 premium comparison sets out the actual figures per insurer.

Zorgtoeslag: the Rule Is Stable, the Numbers Are Not

Healthcare allowance is easy to overlook if you assume it is welfare rather than a contribution towards the compulsory premium.

The main conditions are stable: you must be 18 or over, hold Dutch health insurance, and stay under both an income limit and a capital limit. The limits are set per year.

Source: Dienst Toeslagen (belastingdienst.nl), retrieved 4 October 2026. These are the 2026 figures; the 2027 thresholds are published separately for the new year.

For 2027 the government expects the maximum allowance for single people to rise to about €140 a month, to largely offset the premium increase (Prinsjesdag 2026). Read the 2026 numbers as the shape of the rule. The full mechanics, including what counts as a toeslagpartner for arrivals, are in the zorgtoeslag guide.

What to Do in the Meantime

None of the preparation that matters requires a 2027 price.

• Check your provider contracts. Rijksoverheid advises checking whether your insurer has contracts with the care providers you prefer, and whether those contracts carry a cap on the number of treatments. On a naturapolis, care from a provider without a contract may be reimbursed only in part.
• Audit last year’s supplementary cover. Add up what it actually reimbursed. Supplementary policies differ per insurer, unlike the basic package.
• Decide on a voluntary excess before you see the prices, not after. Deciding once you can see the discount is how people take on risk they would not otherwise accept.
• If English service matters to you, work out now which insurers publish policy conditions and claim forms in English — we checked eight of them in which Dutch insurers actually serve you in English.
• Then wait for 12 November and compare two or three shortlisted options rather than the whole market.

For a sense of the baseline you will be comparing against, take what one insurer has on its pages now. a.s.r. states that the compulsory deductible in 2026 is €385 and that you can raise it to a maximum of €885, and it sells three basic variants: Bewuste Keuze and Ruime Keuze (naturaverzekeringen) and Eigen Keuze (a combinatieverzekering). They differ in what they reimburse for care from a provider without a contract; for non-contracted care other than mental healthcare and district nursing that is 65%, 85% and 100% of the average contracted price respectively (asr.nl/zorgverzekering/basisverzekering, retrieved 4 October 2026). No 2027 figures appeared on those pages on that date.

Look at a.s.r. before the switching window opens

For the wider insurer picture, our overview of Dutch health insurers for internationals covers who serves whom.

Our Promise on This Page

This article exists because the honest answer in October is “partly unknown”, and that answer is only useful if somebody comes back and finishes it.

We will update this page when the 2027 premiums are published. Specifically: within days of the 12 November publication date we will add what the market actually did, and we will note any further change to the deductible. If the 2027 basic package letter appears before then, that section gets rewritten too.

Update log

Final thoughts

Put 12 November in your calendar and treat every 2027 premium number you see before it, including the government’s budget average, as something other than a price.

Between now and then, the productive work is unglamorous: confirm your hospital is contracted, work out whether your supplementary policy earned its keep, and shortlist two insurers. When the prices land the comparison is short, and you will still have seven weeks before the cancellation deadline.

Sources: rijksoverheid.nl (switching to another health insurer; what changes in the basispakket; eigen risico; Prinsjesdag 2026, zorg), rijksfinancien.nl (Miljoenennota 2027, measure 27), tweedekamer.nl (bill 36943, Wijziging van de Zorgverzekeringswet teneinde het verplicht eigen risico voor de zorgverzekering per 2027 te verhogen), wetten.overheid.nl (Zorgverzekeringswet Article 5), asr.nl and belastingdienst.nl / Dienst Toeslagen (zorgtoeslag conditions and 2026 limits) — all retrieved 4 October 2026. Legislative status can change from one sitting week to the next; verify the bill status before relying on it. This is editorial analysis of public sources, not insurance, legal or financial advice.