Premium Hike

Health Insurance Should Ease Subscribers' Burden

Health insurance is adding fuel to people's worries that they will have to shoulder heavier financial burdens due to rising consumer prices amid the ongoing global economic crisis. The National Health Insurance Corp. is seeking to increase insurance premiums by 6.4 percent next year in a bid to meet its growing coverage for medical services and stabilize its financial structure.

The authorities have continued to raise premiums over the past decade, except for this year. That is, the state-run corporation has adopted the easiest way to make up for its deficit by forcing subscribers to shoulder the burden. It said charging higher premiums is inevitable because the insurance scheme is forecast to suffer a deficit of between 1 trillion won and 2 trillion won. It ascribed the projected shortfall to declining revenues amid the economic crisis and expanded coverage for health care services.

But an increasing number of people are complaining about the hike plan, asking: why we should pay more for health insurance when our incomes are falling due to wage cuts and layoffs in the wake of the worldwide crisis? They demand that the government and the insurance system reduce the deficit not by imposing higher premiums, but by cutting costs and pushing restructuring.

Public backlash is also growing as the insurance operator has continued to increase the patients' share of payments for medical treatment in addition to premium hikes. The operator has also kept raising doctor fees, yielding to pressure from medical professionals who are engrossed with pocketing more income at the expense of subscribers.

It is urgent for the authorities to find a fundamental solution to the financial problem of health insurance. First, the insurance corporation should downsize and restructure its bloated organization. Second, it also needs to press ahead with managerial reform to improve its efficiency and cut costs. Third, the government and the corporation must step up their efforts to crack down on hospitals and clinics that manipulate medical documents to illegally get insurance payments.

It is also important to minimize increases in doctor fees and drug prices. In particular, it is imperative that the nation map out health care reform to cope with the growing number of senior citizens, whose soaring insurance coverage for medical services are increasingly aggravating the financial health of the insurance system. Let's find ways to ease subscribers' burdens while providing better health care to the public.