Despite Growing Demand, Dutch Health Insurers Dropping Cannabis Coverage

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One of the biggest health insurance companies in the Netherlands announced last month that it will stop covering the costs of medical cannabis. The announcement, which comes at a time of increasing use of medical cannabis in the country, has sparked sharp criticism among patients.

A spokesperson for the Zilveren Kruis insurance company has said reimbursement for medical cannabis “can no longer be justified because in recent scientific research the effects of medicinal cannabis have not been demonstrated.” The research the company refers to is a 2015 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association that concluded that “cannabis and cannabinoid drugs are widely used to treat disease or alleviate symptoms, but their efficacy for specific indications is not clear.”

But the Dutch Bureau of Medicinal Cannabis (BMC), part of the country’s Ministry of Health, sees things differently. In a brochure for patients, the BMC notes that “Medicinal cannabis as yet...

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