The SP’s plans are an ‘ideologically-driven experiment’, writes Barend van Lieshout
This is the first in a series of features by Barend van Lieshout on the healthcare plans of the main political parties.

The SP’s election manifesto rolled off the presses recently. You would think a party that thinks it’s ready for government would moderate its tone a little. The party’s healthcare plans don’t show any evidence of this: the SP is all for embarking on an ideology-driven healthcare experiment.
Sp hates market forces

The manifesto is clear about one thing: the SP party ideologists don’t like managers, administrators and pharmaceutical companies. But market forces are what they hate most. It’s not altogether clear what they mean by market forces, and it wouldn’t be the first time, but what the SP does manage to explain is that they want a complete change of the Dutch healthcare infrastructure, down to the last detail. Insurers will become regional monopolists. There will be outpatients’ clinics in neighbourhoods, obstetrics services will not be concentrated further.
Care will be organised in the vicinity of people’s homes. Sedating people will be taboo (although I have to assume an exception will be made when slightly bigger operations are necessary). And so on and so forth.
Some of the plans do make some sort of sense. But the elephant in the room is the way these plans are to be carried out. We have come to realise that care providers are perfectly capable of deciding how best to cater to their clients’ wishes. But if the SP has anything to say about it, the decisions will based on norms decided by The Hague. I can’t imagine this will lead to better or cheaper healthcare.
Trust in the Hague
The SP also proposes that care workers should be trusted more so they can have pride in their profession. This doesn’t go as far as trusting them to solve their own problems on a local level as the solutions have already been decided on by the Hague. This will turn out to be a difficult balance.
The one good thing about the SP manifesto is the realisation that reform is needed. Their plans include such proven successes as the local care model. It also mentions prevention and attempts to reduce the number of perverse incentives.
Income policy
On the other hand, limiting the personal care budget (PGB) is not going to be helpful. The SP only want a personal care budget when all else fails. Using healthcare as an income policy is not going to help either. It will be very costly and fiscal measures would do the trick just as well.
After reading the SP manifesto I can’t rid myself of the feeling that, with the SP at the helm, the Netherlands is not going to solve its healthcare problem but simply tinker with it, sometimes implementing measures that will have a contradictory effect, and sometimes trying to find refuge in a centralised past which we know will not provide solutions either.
The care sector can only use its resources and talents once during the next government period and any party that wastes either doesn’t deserve to occupy the government benches.
Barend van Lieshout is a healthcare advisor at Rebel.