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5 - South Korea

Universal Health Care in the Context of Private Provision

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2021

M. Ramesh
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore
Azad S. Bali
Affiliation:
Australian National University, Canberra
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Summary

This chapter documents healthpolicy problems that exist in South Korea, the policy tools that are used to address them, and the outcomes they produce. We see that the Korean government has gone to great lengths to establish mechanisms to provide health care to all while containing financial burden on both households and the government. The root cause of the high out-of-pocket payments in Korea is the fee for service (FFS) mode of paying providers which incentivizes over-supply of services that generate higher returns for providers. Unable to replace FFS with capped payments due to political opposition, the government has had to resort to controlling fees and volume of services and requires co-payments from patients. Korea has also established a detailed decision and monitoring processes to curb over-supply and over-charging which have shown only limited success. The financing and payment arrangements and weak regulations coupled with political power of the vested interests make it very difficult to reduce the burden of out of pocket expenditures on households without shifting the burden to the government, a burden that the latter is unwilling to shoulder.

Type
Chapter
Information
Health Policy in Asia
A Policy Design Approach
, pp. 107 - 129
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • South Korea
  • M. Ramesh, National University of Singapore, Azad S. Bali, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book: Health Policy in Asia
  • Online publication: 02 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108692656.005
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • South Korea
  • M. Ramesh, National University of Singapore, Azad S. Bali, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book: Health Policy in Asia
  • Online publication: 02 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108692656.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • South Korea
  • M. Ramesh, National University of Singapore, Azad S. Bali, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book: Health Policy in Asia
  • Online publication: 02 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108692656.005
Available formats
×