What is the preference policy?
Why a preference policy?
With the preference policy, health insurers keep the cost of medicines low. Here they choose one or a few brands of a medicine that they reimburse. This means that you cannot always choose which brand you get. In this text you can read how exactly this works and what it means for you.
How does it work?
Preferential policies are a method used by health insurers to control drug costs. In this process, they choose one or a few specific brands of a drug that they reimburse. If a drug is available in several brands, the health insurer reimburses only the brand they have designated as preferred, unless the doctor indicates that a specific brand is necessary due to medical reasons. This policy helps reduce drug spending without sacrificing the quality of care.
Choice
Each health insurer pursues its own preference policy and decides for itself how many off-patent drugs to include. The overview shows how many drugs each health insurer has designated as preferred. A larger number of preferred drugs means less freedom of choice for patients regarding the brand of their medication. In the table below, you can see that Menzis has designated far fewer preferred drugs in the month of August 2024 than, for example, Zilveren Kruis.
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