▲ Logo of National Health Insurance Service

South Korea operates the National Health Insurance system(NHI) to make it easy and cheap for people to access the medical system. Of course, NHI is considered an ideal welfare service, and provides high-quality service to South Korean people. However, still, there is a critical problem in its running system; loss in the medical profession and equitable treatments' problem, etc.

▲ Foreigner treatment status during 2013 to 2017, by NHI

Especially inequitable problems, many people point out a defect of the system; it is operated by South Korean's tax and also it exists for South Korean people's welfare, however, it is available to non-South Korean, such as foreigner and overseas South Korean. They enter South Korea only to use NHI benefits, not doing proper duty as a South Korean. Since foreign or overseas South Koreans could use it freely after paying medical insurance for only three months, many people used it. It is not illegal, but cognizance about them is not really good, because their payment for registering NHI was far from enough and the inadequate money was covered by South Korean people's tax. According to a report, there was more than 100 billion won of loss in NHI finance in 2016. Some of these problems were solved in 2019 by changing application standards, however, there are still problems, though.

Loss in the medical profession has reached alarming levels, too. Because of NHI, the charge for medical treatments became anomalistically cheap, and this led the medical device companies' rejection of supplying medical appliances. It also resulted in a decrease in the number of medical professions in insurance benefit items, because excessive welfare caused deficits in each medical center.

▲ NHIS Center for Foreign Residents

A cheap and high-quality medical system is what we have to strive for, however, immoderate expansion of welfare can cause serious problems, from causing inconsequentness to making the loss of national finance. Confronting those problems, the South Korea government hat to find a way to make better NHI services.

Oct. 24th, 2020

by Lee Hyun-seo