Ministry Is Ordered to Fix 'Full-Fledged' Health Crisis

Home > National > Politics

print dictionary print

Ministry Is Ordered to Fix 'Full-Fledged' Health Crisis

Acknowledging that Korea's health system is facing a "full-fledged crisis," with the health insurance system forecast to run a 4 trillion-won ($3.2 billion) deficit this year, Prime Minister Lee Han-dong gave a tall order to the Ministry of Health and Welfare on Monday: Come up with a radical solution.

"Medical reform, as forecast at the outset of its implementation last summer, has aggravated people's inconvenience and given rise to misuse of medicine," the prime minister said.

The prime minister was speaking on behalf of President Kim Dae-jung, who directed the ministries involved to come up with countermeasures for an unending surge of problems in the nation's health system.

The president's order came after the Ministry of Health and Welfare said on March 12 that medical reform was to blame for the shaky health system.

Last July the government implemented a significant medical reform by strictly dividing the roles of doctors and pharmacists. Doctors were allowed to prescribe drugs, but no longer to dispense them. Pharmacists were limited to dispensing drugs strictly according to a doctor's description.

The reform has stirred an outcry from both doctors and pharmacists, leading to increases in reimbursements by the National Health Insurance Corporation. For patients, the reform meant going from pharmacy to pharmacy to obtain prescribed medicines, as well as increased costs.

"The current health crisis is because the government went ahead with the medical reform last year, on top of a foundation already weakened by the in integration of the nation's two main insurance systems in 1998," said Kim Jong-dae, a former senior-ranking official with the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

The nation's two main health insurance systems ?the company-based and the region-based -- consolidated their administrative work in 1998 with the goal of achieving a single health service by 2002.

"Warning signs suggesting a breakdown of the national health insurance system have been there for the past several years," said Choi Byung-ho, a researcher at the Korea Institute of Health and Social Affairs. He cited "the depletion of the insurance reserves by the company-based health insurance system after the 1998 integration with the regional-based insurance system, and the hike in reimbursement made out to doctors and druggists."

A heavy blow to the health insurance system has been the increase in the number of elderly citizens. When it rose to 7 percent of the population, the National Health Insurance Corporation's expenditure exceeded 2 trillion won.

The ruling Millennium Democratic Party's chief policy maker, Rep. Nam goong Seuk, put forth a proposal to raise insurance fees by 10 to 15 percent. The opposition Grand National Party proposed taking a new look at the medical reform.





by Choi Hoon / Kim Ji-soo

Log in to Twitter or Facebook account to connect
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
help-image Social comment?
s
lock icon

To write comments, please log in to one of the accounts.

Standards Board Policy (0/250자)