The minority government and alliance partner PVV back health minister Edith Schippers’ decision to claw back €74m from family doctors because they overspent their budgets.

MPs debated the minister’s decision to press ahead with the cuts on Thursday morning. Thousands of doctors closed their surgeries between 10.00 and 13.00 hours to listen to the debate.
Doctors say they spent more than the budget because last year they took over a number of tasks which used to be done by hospitals. In addition, they say the claw-back amounts to €98m.
This year the overspend is set to reach €160m which may lead to further budget reductions, the Financieele Dagblad said.
The national family doctors’ association is planning to go to court to fight the reduction in the budget.

Hospitals
Meanwhile, hospitals are concerned that their workloads will increase because of the dispute between family doctors and Schippers, Trouw reports.
As part of their protest, doctors have threatened to refer more cases to hospital rather than treat them themselves.
‘This will lead to an undesirable demand for care from hospitals,’ Roelf de Boer, chairman of the hospital association NVZ, has said in a letter to the minister.
If doctors carry out their threat, it could lead to hospitals breaking their agreement with the minister not to increase the volume of treatments carried out by more than 2.5%, the letter said.