Comparison of the Health Care Systems in Korea and Taiwan And Factors Associated with National Health Insurance Expenditure in Korea

Korea has been under the influence of Chinese culture due to geographic reason and become to have similar politics, economy and social culture because of politic cooperation due to cold war and economic cooperation called the four Asian dragons. This led similar establishment of health care system: First, health insurance scheme for employees was implemented under the banner of economic development, then the coverage was extended to the universal population and reduced administrative cost and raised the quality of health care service with single payment. As a result, the both countries raised the average health status of the population effectively in a relatively short time. However, seeing the rising trend of national health expenditure in the both countries, the fastest increase in the world can be observed in Korea by 10% or more increase per year, while Taiwan shows 3-5% increase per year and this threatens the sustainable development of Korea health insurance. Therefore, this research was conducted to understand similarities and differences of health care system and health insurance policy of the Korea and Taiwan through literature review and to study the reason for the increase of national health insurance expenditure of Korea. National health expenditure of the both countries is showing uprising trend every year and this relates with GDP and rapid aging of population in the both countries. The reason for faster increase of health expenditure in Korea learned from the comparison of policies of the both countries is as follows: 1. Korea has weak health care resource distribution function due to loose regulations for resource supply since Korea is relatively sensitive to the demand of market and the portion of public health care resource lower than that of Taiwan. 2. Conversion factor cannot control medical fee due to diversified price determination system. 3. Korea has insufficient control mechanism for the quantity of health care service due to payment system mainly with ‘Fee for Service’ and limited range of benefits. National health expenditure of Korea is increasing rapidly without distinction of public and private sector. Comparison to Taiwan’s health care system and national health insurance, although Korea’s national health insurance is social insurance with public revenue, it has insufficient public sector health care system due to health care environment mainly with private supply. Therefore, it requires a comprehensive strategy such as strengthen public resource, control supply and proper use of health care resource.