ed Health insurance coverage
Korea’s health insurance system is touted as a success in general, because almost all nationals have been able to receive medical treatment at cheaper costs.
But things become different if someone falls ill because of a serious illness. It’s not rare to see a family buckle under the weight of snowballing medical expenses, especially those not covered by the public medical scheme.
The government’s plan to expand the scope of medical coverage is a step in the right direction. But it’s necessary to look at the package more carefully in order to minimize the anticipated side effects.
According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, three types of medical costs incurred by “selective treatment,’’ hospital rooms with fewer beds and care-giving services will be covered by the state health insurance.
These expenses have irked the public because large university hospitals in Seoul and other big cities almost make it obligatory for patients to pay extra fees after letting them consult so-called veteran doctors and use expensive rooms. And patients have had to bear the burden of the cost of care-giving if there is no one to care for them. In fact, these practices have been a way for hospitals to make up for losses that arose from low medical fees.
If the latest medical reform blueprint goes as scheduled, patients will have seen their financial burden cut to one third by 2017. To finance the expansion of the medical coverage, an additional 4.6 trillion won will be needed, and the health ministry says it’ll be okay if all subscribers pay an average 1-percent more in health insurance premiums starting next year. But it’s questionable if this amount will be enough, given that the government has promised to reimburse hospitals for their declining revenues 100 percent.
More importantly, the measures will be at more risk of spurring patients to frequent big university hospitals in Seoul at the expense of smaller ones in the provinces. This will be quite unreasonable, considering that the benefits coming from the latest changes will mostly go to patients in big hospitals.
Many doctors and hospital operators are allegedly critical of the blueprint, citing the lack of reality, but carrying it out is essential, taking into account people’s plight resulting from costly medical expenses. Nonetheless, the government needs to pay more heed to such criticism so that half-baked policies won’t undermine the plan as a whole.
All things considered, it may be high time for the government to overhaul our medical referral system across the board, and one option is to focus more on preventive medicine so that resources from our health insurance scheme can be used in efforts to prevent diseases.