By Choi Sung-jin
Three out of 10 Koreans suffer chronic illnesses, including high blood pressure, and they spent 21.3 trillion won ($18.8 billion) on medical expenses last year, statistics show.
About 14.39 million people, or 28.5 percent of the population, received treatment for 11 chronic ailments last year, according to the 2015 health insurance statistics released by the National Health Insurance Service and the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service Tuesday.
High blood pressure was the biggest reason, with 5.7 million patients, followed by nervous system diseases (2.74 million), mental and behavioral disorders (2.62 million), diabetes (2.52 million) and liver diseases (1.49 million).
Their medical expenses of 21.3 trillion won accounted for 36.2 percent of total medical costs and represented an increase of 1.57 trillion won, or 8 percent, on the previous year, surpassing the 20 trillion won mark for the first time.
The largest amount -- 4.93 trillion won -- was spent on cancers, followed by mental and behavioral disorders (3.83 trillion won), high blood pressure (2.84 trillion won), cerebral vascular diseases (2.4 trillion won) and diabetes (1.81 trillion won).
In the case of mental and behavioral disorders, medical expenses grew steeply at 11.7 percent a year, the second highest after nervous system diseases.
“This is due largely to the increase in victims of depression resulting from a stressful external environment, including undue workload, fierce competition and economic pressure, as well as the growth of dementia patients amid rapid population aging,” said Dr. Kim Byung-soo from Seoul Asan Hospital. “The eased prejudice against mental illnesses has also helped push up their treatment rate.”
Medical expenses for people aged 65 or more also broke the 20 trillion won mark for the first time with 22.23 trillion won, up 11.4 percent from 2014, and more than twice the 10.73 trillion won in 2007.
High blood pressure took up the largest proportion of the total with 1.31 trillion won, followed by knee arthritis (766.4 billion won), type-2 diabetes (683.4 trillion won) and spinal diseases (401.2 billion won). Annual average medical expenses for each older person were 3.62 million won, more than three times the all-age average of 1.13 million won, the statistics showed.
The average number of hospital-visit days last year stood at 19.3 -- 2.6 days for in-hospital patients and 16.7 days for outpatients. The number of hospital-visit days by outpatients had continued to rise, from 15.1 days to a peak of 17.1 days in 2014, but fell last year for the first time.
“Although people’s use of medical services has continued to increase, their growth pace has slowed from a double-digit to a single-digit rate,” said Professor Kim Jin-hyon of Seoul National University. “This seemed to reflect the increasingly difficult economic situation, forcing people to stay away from hospitals.”
The average monthly medical insurance premium paid by workplace subscribers was 100,501 won, compared with 80,876 won for locally insured subscribers, up 3.6 percent and 2.9 percent, respectively, from 2014.
Benefits slightly exceeded the subscribers’ premium payments. An average health insurance subscriber paid 864,428 won in premiums last year and had 892,320 won of medical expenses on average, 1.03 times what they paid, the statistics showed.