Self-employed to benefit from 50 percent hike in medical subsidies

The ruling Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) unveiled Thursday a medicare reform plan calling for the introduction of a system imposing both uniform and differential medical fee rates on patients. The plan also envisaged a 50 percent increase in state health insurance subsidies for self-employed workers. Kim Sung-Soon, chairman of the MDP policy coordination office, told reporters that the measure was introduced in a meeting of the party`s Supreme Council at MDP headquarters in Yoido. He said the plan would be proposed to the administration at the forthcoming government-MDP policy consultation meeting.

According to the MDP medicare reform plan, the existing medicare rates system that provides for item-by-item fees would be abolished in order to block the charging of excessive medicare fees. Instead, a system stipulating uniform rates according to groups of diseases will be newly introduced. The uniform medicare rates system has been applied at 16 general hospitals and 423 ordinary hospitals and clinics across the country since last July on a trial basis. The program covers nine groups of diseases, including Caesarean section births and appendectomies.

Yonhap