권순만 교수

South Korea introduced mandatory social health insurance for industrial workers in large corporations in 1977, and extended it incrementally to the self-employed until it covered the entire population in 1989. Thirty years of national health insurance in Korea can provide valuable lessons on key issues in health care financing policy which now face many low- and middle-income countries aiming to achieve universal health care coverage, such as: tax versus social health insurance; population and b

Since its introduction in 1977, the national health insurance programme in Korea has paid health care providers on a fee-for-service basis. Regulated fee-for-service payment has resulted in an increased volume and intensity of medical care. It has also distorted the input mix of treatment because physicians have substituted more profitable and uninsured (no coverage) medical services for those with lower margins, as is evidenced by the sharp increase in the caesarean delivery rate. This paper ex

When the Asian financial crisis took a heavy toll on Korea in the late 1990s, policy makers responded by extending welfare policy. For many analysts, this was a paradoxical move, marking a fundamental reconfiguration of the social policy system. This article contests that interpretation. It examines the changes made to Korean social policy in recent years, and considers their impact on the Korean welfare state. It notes both that welfare extensions have been comparatively limited, and that they

With rapid aging, change in family structure, and the increase in the labor participation of women, the demand for long-term care has been increasing in Korea. Inappropriate utilization of medical care by the elderly in health care institutions, such as social admissions, also puts a financial burden on the health insurance system. The widening gap between the need for long-term care and the capacity of welfare programs to fulfill that need, along with a rather new national pension scheme and th

This article examines the major elements of health care financing such as financial risk protection, resource generation, resource pooling, and purchasing and payment; provides key lessons; and discusses the challenges for health care financing systems of Asian countries. With the exception of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, most health care systems of Asia provide very limited financial risk protection. The role of public prepaid schemes such as tax and social health insurance is minimal, a

To make health systems more resilient to shocks and crises, it is critical for governments to invest in core health system functions such as financing, service delivery, and governance. Ensuring sufficient resources for health is necessary for basic infrastructure including vaccines; the overall level of health expenditure and the public sources of funding are important. Funding for public health services, including infection prevention and control, surveillance, and information systems, is fund

<b>Abstract</b>-Although South Korea successfully established national health insurance (NHI) in 1977, and has maintained universal coverage since 1989, it has long been criticized for insufficient benefit coverage. Korea has been under public pressure to increase its NHI benefit coverage, while also facing controversies over the appropriateness of items that were newly added to the benefit package. Pressured by the controversies and difficulties regarding national policy decisions on the benefi

The contact stress in a gerotor pump is addressed in this paper because the gerotor pump cannot be adjusted for wear. The first part of this paper presents a simple and exact rotor profile equations of the gerotor pump. In the second part of this paper, an explicit formula to avoid undercut in the inner-rotor of the gerotor pump is proposed by examining the minimum radius of curvature of the inner-rotor tooth profile on the convex section. It is found that undercut does not occur so long as the

This study evaluated the effects of outpatient cost-sharing on health care utilization by the aged. Cost sharing of the elderly had little effect on controlling health care utilization.

Since the introduction of Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in 1995, there has been considerable concern that poor access to essential medicines in developing countries would be exacerbated because strengthening intellectual property rights (IPR) leads to monopoly of pharmaceutical markets and delayed entry of lower-cost generic drugs. However, despite extensive research and disputes regarding this issue, there are few empirical studies on the topic. In this study, we