文章基本信息

标题：Health Care Reform in South Korea: Success or Failure?
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作者：Jong-Chan Lee
期刊名称：American journal of public health
印刷版ISSN：0090-0036
出版年度：2003
卷号：93
期号：1
页码：48-51
语种：English
出版社：American Public Health Association
摘要：South Korea is one of the world’s most rapidly industrializing countries. Along with industrialization has come universal health insurance. Within the span of 12 years, South Korea went from private voluntary health insurance to government-mandated universal coverage. Since 1997, with the intervention of the International Monetary Fund, Korean national health insurance (NHI) has experienced deficits and disruption. However, there are lessons to be drawn for the United States from the Korean NHI experience. SOUTH KOREA ACHIEVED universal health insurance in 12 years. This remarkable achievement started modestly in 1977 when the government mandated medical insurance for employees and their dependents in large firms with more than 500 employees. In 1989, national health insurance (NHI) was extended to the whole nation. Most Western analysts were surprised. Many predicted Korean NHI would falter financially, but trends in financial receipts and disbursements from 1990 to 1995 showed no sign of financial instability. Everything went smoothly in both administration and financing in the first half of the 1990s. However, with the advent of the economic crisis of 1997 throughout southeast Asia, Korean NHI began to run a financial deficit. At the end of 1997, despite some Korean resistance, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) intervened in Korean financial affairs, causing a dramatic increase in the NHI’s deficit, which then grew each year until 2002. When the government announced that NHI would separate reimbursement for pharmaceuticals from medical care in July of 2000, Westernized medical practitioners closed their clinics and refused to treat patients. This policy of separating reimbursement for pharmaceuticals from medical care is regarded as the most significant factor in disrupting the financial structure of Korean NHI.