Koreans feeling huge medical expenditure burden

 23-Jul-15, Business Korea

The Ministry of Health & Welfare and the National Assembly Research Service compared the former’s Korean National Health Accounts and Total Health Expenditure data for 2014 to the OECD’s Health Data for the same year. They subsequently announced on July 22 that the Korean government’s public financial resources accounted for 54.5 percent of the country’s national health expenditures in 2012. Conversely, the average of the 34 OECD member countries was as high as 72.3 percent.

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According to the announcement, the public financial resources include taxes and social security funds such as the health insurance, occupational health and safety insurance, and long-term care insurance, and the ratio of the resources to total expenditures reached 56.6 percent in 2010 before decreasing to 55.5 percent in 2011 and 54.5 percent in 2012. Korea ranked 31st among the 34 countries in this ratio, followed by the United States (47.6 percent), Chile (49.2 percent), and Mexico (50.6 percent).

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 Elsevier APAC Healthcare Update