[Editorial] Cannot leave National Health Insurance Corporation As Is

It is outrageous that National Health Insurance Corporation (NHIC) wasted about 20 billion won for illegal payment of holiday allowance to the employees. NHIC has barely managed to survive with bank loans due to enormous amount of deficit. How could it be explained that NHIC operate in such a luxury with the customers` money in the midst of criticism on the continuous raises in insurance premium? Furthermore, NHIC had lost 100 billion won of outstanding debt through mistakes made by administrative. Seeing that the NHIC ignored what they must do and that they were very enthusiastic in their greed, it is comprehensible why the Health Insurance budget almost filed bankruptcy.

NHIC is a mammoth organization that has over 10,000 employees, which is the reduced figure after being indicated by the inspection of the Board of Audit and Inspection in March this year. When the holiday allowance became a subject of controversies, the Corporation explained that "there were lots of extra-works in holidays to treat the delayed works due to the strikes last year." However, no one will trust the explanation that over 80 percent of the employees did not have a single holiday during two months while it had already excessive number of employees.

The reason of the distrust in NHIC originated in the rough-and-ready unification of the health insurances. NHIC is a strange enough organization that, even though the employed insurance and the local insurance were unified in July last year, the services are still separated and the two labor unions are struggling with each other. In addition, NHIC does not even have the technology for an on-line payment, indicating how poorly it has been operated. Series of problems seem natural that a mammoth of an organization managing over 15 trillion won a year is operated in such condition. Moreover, the social insurance union went on strike from yesterday, requesting the reinstatement of the laid-off employees. What on earth they are trying to demonstrate?

It is very clear that the Health Insurance budget is to become bankrupt in this situation. Uncontrollable incidents may arise if the unification of the health insurance budget is implemented without cutting off the root of calamity. First of all, it is urgent to reduce the organization by working off the surplus employees after evaluating appropriate number of employees. Reducing the managing and operating expenses is a goal of the unification of health insurances. It is also important to introduce a modern management system and to increase the specialties of employees. Such project cannot be entrusted to the Corporation. NHIC cannot move forward a single step due to the tackles of unionists. It seems that the government has to intervene to normalize the Health Insurance organizations and to recover NHIC and Health Insurance as well.