Thanksgiving in Holland

So…obviously Thanksgiving is not a holiday in the Netherlands.  Even with attending an international school that has quite a few Americans, there wasn’t much mention of it.

We decided to host our own Thanksgiving.  We invited two Dutch families - one that had lived next to us for 18 months in the US and one that lives next to us now.  Our next door neighbors were so excited to attend a Thanksgiving that the son came home from college specifically so that he could see what all of the fuss was about.

Since turkeys aren’t native to this continent, it can be very difficult to get turkey.  We found a butcher where we could get a cooked, boneless, stuffed turkey.  This turned out to be a mistake.  The stuffing was sort of pink in color and it was almost impossible to tell where the turkey meat ended and the stuffing began.  Besides that, though, we had mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, homemade bread, and pumpkin and pecan pies.  

Mostly, people seemed to like the meal.  The one thing they didn’t seem to like was the pumpkin pie.  Everyone took some and ate about two bites each.  We threw out a lot of partially eaten pumpkin pie.  But everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

Here's the group:

The American flag in the back is both patriotic and functional. It's hiding a hole in the wall where the previous renters had a tv mounted. It's the only decoration we have that could hide that big of a hole!

On another note…we’ve been engaging more with the medical system here in Holland.  Before we left I had seen these stats.  It shows that the Netherlands is ranked number 2 in the world for health care (behind Norway) and is number 1 for “access to care” and “timeliness”.  After our experiences, I’m wondering where they got these rankings.

Here’s how things went for me the first time I engaged with the system…

1. Something came up where I needed to be seen

2. I called the doctor to tell her what was going on - you can only call during a one hour time period in the afternoon to talk to the doctor

3. She ordered a test.  This meant that she submitted the information for what test I needed to the lab and then I got an email from the lab that I had to set up an appointment to go to the lab.

4. I was able to get an appointment for the lab on the next day

5. Once I had gone to the lab, the technician told me it took 2-5 working days to get the results back.  I asked if the doctor would call me with the results.  She said “No…you have to call the doctor to see if the results are in.”

6. So…every day for 3 days I called the doctor to see if my tests were back yet.  You can only call the doctor to check on test results between 1pm and 2pm, so if you have a conflict during that time, you just miss knowing that day whether or not your test is back.

7. Once the test was back, the doctor submitted the prescription to the pharmacy and we were done

It just seemed inefficient to have to call every day for several days to see whether or not my test results were back.  It took up time during the phone call hour for both the doctor and me that could have been spent in other ways.

The dentist was a little bit similar.    I got an appointment for a teeth cleaning.  When I went to the dentist they told me that I was supposed to do a separate appointment at another practitioner first for the hygienist - to have my teeth cleaned and polished.  Then, once I’ve done the appointment at the hygienist, I am supposed to get an appointment with the actual dentist (I’m guessing this would be days or weeks later) for the actual checkup.

Granted, on the international chart, Holland is 8th for administrative efficiency.  That tracks.  But I was not expecting the inefficiency of the lab results or having to have two appointments just to get my teeth cleaned.

One other point on healthcare, though…the health insurance here seems quite good.  I talked about the low cost of it in a previous blog but despite the low cost, lots of things are covered.  Mike sees a “physio” - similar to a sports medicine person - once a month.  That’s fully covered.  My mental health stuff has been 80% covered.  We’ve never had $1 paid for either Mike’s sports medicine person or my mental health in the US.  Even the “platinum” insurance plans never paid anything for either of those.  I understand that we were “out of network”, but you’d think they could maybe cover even a little bit of it given we were paying 10x more….

We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!