[Editorial] Health Insurance Is in `Critical Condition`

As health insurance benefits reduced and the consumers` burden increased, people`s level of dissatisfaction is rising. Financial situation of the health insurance is worsening. On top of this, health insurance suffered the huge amount of loss due to the negligent management by the National Health Insurance Corporation (NHIC). Thus, mistrust on the whole system is increasing. Given the fact that even the `anti national health insurance` site has appeared on the Internet, the concern that the system itself is unstable seems natural.

The government increased the government support on the regional health insurance from 28.1 percent to 50 percent in May, and decided to limit the estimated loss of health insurance from 4.2 trillion won to 2 trillion won this year by increasing the subscriber`s payment, integrating the medical examination fee with prescription fee, and by enforcing the `reference price system`. The government planned to loan 1.1 billion won, which is the net loss after taking out 900 billion won of deposit from the total loss amounting to 2 trillion won this year, from the financial circle, and to make a balanced budget by repaying gradually until 2006.

However, the loan from the financial circle reached the beyond the limit and the loan is estimated to increase to 1.8 trillion won by the end of the year. This means that the net loss is to increase by 700 billion won. The reason for the increasing loss is that 10 percent of cigarette allotment was gone among the government subsidy, which was originally planned to be allotted to the regional health insurance, as the legislation of the special law on health insurance finance stabilization was not made due to the disagreement between the ruling and the opposition parties. It was also due to the confusion in policy as the reference price system was not enforced.

It was revealed that the financial measure, which was planned to restrain the expenditure of health insurance by controlling the medical suppliers, such as applying the differential medical charge with accordance to the number of patient per doctor and pharmacist, did not work. Then, the government decided to reduce the insurance benefit while increasing the burden of the insurance subscribers. For example, the medicine for cold and vitamin complex, digestive medicine and nutrients will be excluded from the health insurance benefit beginning in next January and April, respectively.

While the financial integration of regional health insurance and workplace health insurance is confused, subscribers of the workplace health insurance whose premium is to increase are complaining a lot.

What instigates the crisis of health insurance and the public distrust is `moral looseness` of the National Health Insurance Corporation. Who could trust the government`s health insurance administration since it is said that it lost the minimum 63.8 billion won to the maximum 100 billion won due to the administrative mistakes? It is time to fix the health insurance administration that is in critical condition.