South Korea’s challenge to privatize the health care plan.

South Korea’s national health care began in 1977 as president Park Chung Hee declared his 4^th 5-year economic development plan. To improve the health of workers and facilitate operation of business and economy, the national health care, initially, covered the employees of business sectors with more than 500 employees and the people who were in public charge. The coverage of the national health care has widened as it now covers employees of smaller size of business sectors, public servants, rural and urban habitants. In 1989, the national health care finally widened its coverage to every citizen of South Korea.

This country which has provided all of its citizens the national health insurance and helped them from the heavy burdens of medical and medicinal costs now prepares to privatize the health care service on open market. Many people are now concerned about how the new system would prevent poor people from receiving medical services. As the wealthiest 10% pay almost 30% of the fund for the national health insurance, the advent of these privatized health care services is expected to cause significant decreases both in the cost of the health care plan and the quality of the services. As the wealthy people who took the burdens of the costs for the poor will cancel the national health insurance and register for the private health insurance, the national health insurance will not be able to acquire adequate funding and will lessen the coverage of the medical benefits.

The complexity of the health care system causes more problems for the poor. The poor, often deprived of nutrition, work and sanitary and healthy living conditions, are more prone to sickness, which results in frequent visits to the doctor. Because the new health care plan can no longer support the poor, national health care faces difficulties maintaining its budgets to guarantee the poor access to medical resources.

Another problem arises – as the privatized health insurance companies operate for profit, they try not to compensate as much as possible. For instance, the South Korea’s national health insurance compensation rate is more than 90%. However, it is expected that the compensation rate of private health insurance companies would be around 30%. If the poor register for privatized health insurance, they will have to pay more for less benefit. While the availability of medical service increases, more people would find it difficult to afford medical care.

Since privatized health insurances are often affiliated with hospitals, patients will have less acceptability. Insurance companies would restrict their customers from meeting doctors from unaffiliated institutions. Worst scenario is that patients would have to travel far to find the hospital affiliated with their health insurance companies, possibly missing the chance to survive. The case is rare, but it happens.

In the status quo, privatizing health care services is expected to cause significant damage to the poor. As the poor are more inclined to work in harsh conditions usually with manual labor, their physical bodies are the means for survival. South Korea’s national health insurance is currently preventing those people from falling into irretrievable misery and poverty. The advent of privatized health care would increase the out-of-pocket spending which would burden the poor. In a way, national health insurance the embodiment of social justice, which is, according to Stephen P. Marks, a “particularly appealing concept for public health practitioners because it captures their concern for poverty, inequality and exclusion.”

As health is one of the most important concerns for all people, South Korea’s preparation to open the health care market to the private sector is facing difficulties. People are concerned that they might have to undergo such tragic incidents shown in Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko.”

© 2010, Changmin Choi. All rights reserved.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 3:30 AM and is filed under 2010, 2nd Article, Health, WPHR Students. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.