Een taak voor de staat? De Duitse bezetting en de invoering van de verplichte ziekenfondsverzekering in Nederland, 1939-1949

• Main Author: Robert Vonk
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Open Journals 2012-10-01
• Series: BMGN: Low Countries Historical Review
• Subjects: Health care; Social security; Second Worls War
• Online Access: https://www.bmgn-lchr.nl/articles/8149

A Responsibility of the State?: Social Security, the German Occupation and the Introduction of Compulsory Social Health Insurance in the Netherlands, 1939-1949 In historiography the Sickness Funds Decree (1941) has always been portrayed as<br />either being a Dutch or a German product. The author argues it was both. The German occupier was able to break through the political stalemate that had delayed the introduction of social health insurance during the previous decades. However the German authorities could not completely bypass Dutch ideas. The initial farreaching proposal was blocked by combined resistance from Dutch civil servants and ‘Berlin’. After the war, the restored Dutch government proposed a Beveridgemodel<br />of social security, with the state at the centre of power. This proposal was rejected since the general feeling was against the state controlling health insurance. The Sickness Funds Decree seemed to be better suited to this mood. By establishing<br />the Sickness Fund Council the power over social health insurance shifted from the state to the civil society.