Orthodontist

Hi and welcome to the Forum.

Once you have registered at the local Town Hall and received your BSN numbers, it will enable you to register with a local doctor and dentist who will help you further.  Don't forget that your Health Insurance also needs to reflect your needs with regards to Dental care.

Hope this helps.

Cynic
Expat Team

Hello Cynic, thanks for the response I appreciate it. I'm looking for some feedback like for expat who already have braces when they arrive in the Netherlands. We're they able to get the treatment continuously? Or it was removed by the dentist.

Hi again,

2 of our kids had braces; it never caused us any issues as we moved around the world.  That said, all of our kids have now left home, so it was some time ago.  So I'm assuming that orthodontic practices will have advanced, not getting any worse; worst-case scenario would be that they changed his current set-up to one in use in Holland.  I've never heard any accusations of the Dutch dental system not being up there with the best available in the world.

Hopefully, someone will read this and have some up to date information for us.

Hope this helps.

Cynic
Expat Team

darkat wrote:

We're they able to get the treatment continuously?

I have come a bit late to this thread, but what you should know is that the insurance cover for orthodontics has changed a lot here in the Netherlands (and elsewhere in Europe) recently.

One of our teenagers has just been fitted with a brace, the other has just had her brace removed.

So, we have been constantly having to move from one health insurer at the end of every year in order to keep getting cover.

Now the game has changed. Most health insurers here now state that you will only get cover for orthodontics from the second year onwards (meaning you have to pay for the higher cover during the first year, but you do not get any actual insurance payouts towards a brace, for example). Other insurers will pay out immediately that you become registered with them, but only a maximum of 70%. The few remaining who adhere to the former cover will pay out normally between €1500-€2000 during the life of the insurance policy, so the reason why it was a necessity to keep switching between insurance companies in order to keep the cover going.

We have now switched from Unive to the parent organization, VGZ (via United Consumers, which offers a discount on the VGZ policies). We will have to see where we can go for our daughter's final year with a brace in 2020, but I am glad that we are nearing the end of having to try and find insurance cover for this. It seems that insurers have noticed that customers are just switching between insurers and paying very little for orthodontics (if anything at all) and are trying to close this loophole.

Braces (and their fitting/upkeep) in the NL are very expensive in the long run!

Be aware that the above refers to orthodontic insurance cover for children up to the age of 18. I have no idea what the cover is (now) like for adults...

Depends on your insurance, most families pay around 170 euro p.p. or higher for a full cover of the overall costs.