insur. depends on your employer and 100 other factors. some plans very little cost others maybe 25%. if you are independently employed insur will run about $25,000 to 35,000 per year for the family.

if your son is "healthy" and is a "good" diabetic he can get by on about $6,000/year. this would be if he eats well, moderately active and maintains sugar well. fyi if athletic this doubles or triples amount of insulin consumed. if your son takes very poor care of himself very erratic sugar 100-350 and 5-8 extra trips to the ER and or doctor and you want the top end insulin pump, humalog, humalog pens etc then the cost could be as high as your imagination.

Consider applying for medicare or similar?

Where it gets tricky is with in-patient care. There I would agree that it's more like representing yourself in court.

Or if you are buying your own plan through the ACA, the cost will depend primarily on your family income. The unsubsidized cost depends on zip code, sex, age, and whether you smoke tobacco, but assume $300 per month per adult, $150 per month per child. The subsidies which reduce the cost of premiums and also out-of-pocket costs, they start at effectively 100% if you earn $0, and phase out as your family income goes up to about $80,000.

Once you've paid the premiums, then you start paying for the care you use in terms of deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance, up to some annual out-of-pocket maximum. The details depend on the plan, but the basic rule is you can pay more premiums and your out-of-pocket maximums will decrease. But, doing the math, you can rarely "save" month by paying more in premiums for lower maximums, even if you know you will max it out, since insurers know that it's mostly sick people who will opt for the higher premiums in the first place. But it is convenient to only have to send one check a month, instead of constantly writing checks for every script, appointment, etc.

If your co-pay is, let's say, $25, expect to be paying that amount ~15x every 3 months for T1D. Everything is it's own script (blood strips, ketone strips, needles, glycogon, insulin, lancets, etc.) so you get hit with a lot of individual $25 co-pays, although they are not all being filled every month.

If you end up having to go to the ER after a particularly bad low, expect that could max out your out-of-pocket expenses for the rest of the year. So keep an eye on that annual out-of-pocket maximum, which typically will be $5,000 - $7,500. After you hit that maximum, all other benefits are paid 100% by insurance. For a particularly bad year, it helps to note, the family maximum annual out-of-pocket will be 2x the individual maximum.

Another factor is if you want to use the latest tech (CGM, Pods) your insurance likely will cover it, but not always, and there's probably a 20% "durable equipment" co-pay (which counts toward your maximum). This can increase costs for a year you are buying new expensive equipment to get started.

If you are getting insurance through work, and you lose your job, you are allowed to continue paying the full share of the premiums and keep your insurance, through a program called COBRA. That's worth it especially if you've maxed out your out-of-pocket and there are a few months left in the year where you can get 100% coverage. Otherwise, it's usually cheaper to switch to an ACA plan.

Bottom line, fully un-subsidized insurance costs for a family actually using the benefits (paying most if not all of the out-of-pocket maximums) are between $20k - $30k per year. Most Americans don't realize this because the ~$15k premiums are part of their pay package but don't really show up clearly on the pay stub.

Of course any analysis which only looks at personal spending on premiums and out-of-pocket expenses without also looking at tax rate and the percent of those taxes which also went to healthcare costs is, I think, fundamentally flawed. For example, "Healthcare should be free for everyone!" †To be funded by a new 10% income tax.

Finally, without also adjusting for public-sector healthcare R&D costs as well as cost shifting to countries more willing to subsidize private R&D, then... well, what exactly are we even comparing? ("Healthcare here is so cheap, we pay generic prices for all the latest wonder-drugs! So glad we benefit from all this great R&D everyone else is funding!")

In short, your data point tells me nothing about what people in NL are really "spending" on healthcare, as well as to what extent the "lower" costs of healthcare in NL could be a result of freeloading on other nation's R&D.