Regional medical insurance rates to jump

The government and National Health Insurance Corp. are seeking to raise the medical insurance premium by as much as 39% for regional members and 35.7% for company members from the beginning of November.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare and the corporation held a finance committee meeting Tuesday and studied ways of increasing the insurance premium by 20% to 39%. As for company medical insurance, the finance of public servants and school teachers union will be integrated next year, and then insurance premiums will rise 3.6% or 3.8%.

In this connection, company members, who pay 2.8% of their salary as medical insurance premium, are expected to see their premiums rise 28.5% to 35.7%, while that of public servants and school teachers, who pay 3.5% of their salary as premium, will increase 5.9% to 11.7%.

Most members of the finance committee strongly protested against such a high rate of premium increase, saying that they cannot accept the hike, as it only increases the burden of subscribers. So the finance committee meeting ended without any conclusion.