• Health Policy and Management
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.17-39
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• 2005

Social solidarity, equity in financing, and efficiency in administration have been core issues in the development of Korean health insurance reformation since 1988. This study is to investigate the trend of administrative cost in Korean National Health Insurance from various aspects. For the analysis of administrative cost, the expenditures of each insurance society and the National Health Insurance Corporation are divided into 4 items of (1) insurance benefit, (2) administrative cost, (3) an agency provision accounts, (4) other expenses, and then they are reorganized. The analyses based on 5 types of the health insurance administrative cost showed that efficiency in administration has been improved generally. We, however, should consider qualitative aspects such as customer's satisfaction with health insurance administration, prompt service, control of unjust expenditure (unjust claims), and provision of medical service including health consultation in assessing efficiency of administration. And, in order to connect the administrative costs of health insurance with efficiency, we need to give a fundamentally new definition, which can contain elaborateness of expenditure in details including the structure and evaluation method of administrative costs. It may be necessary to develop new indicators or analyzing methods hereafter.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.178-184
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• 2020

Background: Korea set up a new diagnosis-related group as a demonstration project in 2009. The new diagnosis-related group was reformed in 2016. The main purpose of the study is to identify the effect of reform on coverage of national health insurance. Methods: This study collected inpatient data from a hospital that contains medical information and cost from 2015 July to 2016 June. The dependent variable was the coverage of national health insurance. The dependent variable was divided by total, internal medicine partition, surgical partition, and psychiatric partition. To analyze the effect of the reform, this study conducted an interrupted time series analysis. The final sample included 23,695. Results: The health insurance coverage of internal medicine has the highest, followed by surgery and psychiatry. The health insurance coverage of bundle payment is higher than that of unbundled payment. The proportion of bundled payment and non-benefit decreased and the proportion of unbundled payment increased. The coverage of national health insurance significantly increased after policy reform in internal medicine partition (p-value=0.0356). Conclusion: The results of the study imply that policy reform enhanced the coverage of national health insurance in internal medicine. The government needs to monitor side effects such as an increase of unbundled payment.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.157-172
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to provide basic information for improving medical security between the Korean National Health Insurance Corporation and the private health insurance in Pusan Metropolitan area by investigating of the recognition with the benefit groups. Questionnaires of 431 were taken between Feb. 11th and Feb. 25th 2008. The survey was carried out to gather information about SES and contents of insurance and recognition between the benefit group of the Korean National Health Insurance and the private health insurance on the financial conditions and the stability. The result of survey is as follows. First, there is a difference between the National Health Insurance and the private health insurance on the financial conditions and the stability of the Korean National Health Insurance. Second, there is a high score at the private health insurance on the financial conditions and the stability of the private health insurance. Third, privatizing of a National Health Insurance is high score at increase of the premium, medical payments of the National Health Insurance group and is high score at enhance of quality of medical service and decrease of loss of medical payment of the private health insurance group. Therefore, to provides more information and improved medical security with the benefit group. it is necessary for concerns to put more efforts in creating Conflicting vs. Complementing of systemic base.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.161-175
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• 2005

Since the introduction of mandatory health insurance in In, the Korean national health insurance(KNHI) has grown rapidly. In 2004, about $96.9\%$ of the total population are covered by the KNHI and the remaining $3.1\%$ by the Medical Aid program. Despite national health insurance system in Korea, private health insurance market has grown rapidly. In 2004, the size of the private health insurance market was estimated at 6,568 billion won. The purpose of this study Is to identify the factors that determine the purchasing decisions of supplementary private health insurance under mandatory national health insurance system in Korea. The data from n04 Busan Health Survey were analysed for the Purpose. The variables in this study are demographic factors, health status and health behavioral factors, health care systemic factors, and socioeconomic factors. For statistical analyse, we used logistic regression. The Findings show that female, economically active age group(especially 35-49 years), persons with better health status or experience of health screening test are more likely to purchase private health insurance. And higher household income and expenditure, higher education level are more associated with the increased probabilities of private health insurance purchases. This results imply that the expanding of private health insurance market could widen the gap between the have and have-not in terms of equal health care accessibility.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.9-35
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• 2007

The Health care program in Korea has now been systemized after 30 years of declaring the inauguration of the national health insurance system by the current government. The national health care covering all Korean citizens was achieved after 12 years of implementing the national health insurance and the health care program since 1977. Hundreds of multiple operational agencies managing the insured individually had undergone the amalgamation process from 1998 to 2000, and had been restructured as one agency, the National Health Insurance Corporation. In 2003, the community/area based financial management was also merged together with the employment based financial management. The National health care system of Korea offer various merits, compared with that of other countries, such as health care provision covering all Koreans, low insurance premium, accessibility of medical services/facilities etc. However, there are still some weak features which need to be addressed for improvement; below expectation insurance cover system, mistrust on the medical services, low medical charges resulted from excessive restrictions, and unstable financial status of the national health insurance etc. Therefore, the National health care system should continue to evolve to re-establish itself as more effective national health care system by further strengthening its merits, and by improving its weaknesses; with adopting the positive system to optimize the costs of prescribed medicines/drugs, applying simpler insurance coverage system to calculate the optimum medical charges, promoting private medical insurances, and increasing insurance premium etc.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.37-68
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• 2007

Health insurance has gone far toward solving Korea's health related problems through thirty years. Health Insurance as social security system has a role of national system to secure national health. But there are many problems in health insurance. There is a dispute about many issues, coverage of health security, compulsory appointment of health insurance organization, coverage and level of health insurance benefit, decisionmaking right of health insurance price, examination of health insurance etc. Generally, the opinion for health insurance policy to be leaded by nation sets against the opinion to be leaded by private sector. It is necessary to study politics of law, constitute law and comparative law for rational solving these problems. If desirable setting of health law system can be made, legal system must be set during a long time and be discussed synthetically in different standpoint.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.244-252
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to investigate the overall operations of National Hospital Food service after it was benefited by National Health Insurance (NHI). The survey was conducted between July and August, 2007. Among questionnaires mailed to 2,558 medical care institutions, 2,090 returned (81%) questionnaires were analyzed by descriptive statistics, $x^2$-test and ANOVA using the SPSS 13.0. The general foodservice characteristic of medical care institutions were as follows. The type of foodservice operations were 'self-operated' (86.9%), 'contracted' (10.5%) and 'Both' (2.6%). Only 6.4% of medical care institutions provided 'hospital food menu not benefited by NHI'. The number of dietitians and cook for medical care institutions were 1.1 and 1.0, respectively. The cost of a general diet meal was 4,205 won and therapeutic diet meal was 4,434 won. The overall operations of hospital foodservice were different depending on the types of medical care institution. After hospital foodservice was benefited by NHI, the overall quality of hospital foodservice including manpower, facilities, and environment was improved. The future direction of hospital foodservice should 1) differentiate the cost of hospital foodservice by the types of medical care institution, 2) increase in co-payment, and 3) provide same service with equal expenses in each party as medical aid or NHS beneficiary.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.137-153
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• 2022

In the process of promoting policies to strengthen health insurance coverage, the relationship between public health insurance and private health insurance, along with the management of non-benefit, is also emphasized as a policy issue. First, the concept and scope of non-benefit were comparatively analyzed by country. Second, the interaction between the public and private health insurance was classified as 'large or small,' and the government's regulation and management policy on private health insurance was classified as 'strong or weak.' Korea has relatively smaller benefits covered by public health insurance, higher copayment expenses, and more areas and scope of non-benefits. In countries where the interaction between public and private health insurance is small, private health insurance-related policies are weak. And in countries with large interactions had public-private partnerships and the government's management policies were also strong. On the other hand, Korea has a large interaction, but the actual structure of cooperation between public and private insurance and management policies were weak. Because the non-benefit sector in Korea is relatively wide, it is difficult to manage compared to other countries where the concept of non-benefit is limited. In addition, the health authorities rarely perform the role of supervision over private health insurance, and they have so few linkages and cooperation for public-private insurance. Therefore, practical policy enforcement is necessary to achieve the easing of the burden of national medical expenses through linkage and cooperation of public-private health insurance with reference to relevant other countries' cases.

• Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.127-138
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• 2007

Objectives: This study aims to examine if the follow-up management service by National Health Insurance (NHI) for person at health risk leads to significant modification of the lifestyle and change of health status. Methods: Of persons who underwent health screening and were classified as having health risks after periodic health screening by NHI in 2003, persons who took the follow-up management service were selected as case group and persons who took no service were selected as control group. The DW database of NHI was used to explore the effect of the follow-up management service on the modification of health status and lifestyle. Chi-square tests were conducted with SAS 9.1 to examine the differences of health promotion effect between case vs. control group. Results: It was shown that of lifestyle behaviors, only exercise was significantly improved for case group compared with control group as the effect of the follow-up management service by NHI (2.98%p) (p<.0001). Further, morbidity rate for control group was 2% higher than that of case group (p <.0001), which indicates that persons who received the follow-up management service better maintained their health significantly than persons who did not. Conclusions: The present study shows that the appropriate follow-up management services need to be provided for maximizing potential effect of periodic health screening by NHI.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.344-354
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• 2021

Background: The purpose of this study was to analyze the effect of national health insurance coverage of Chuna therapy in April 2019 on the costs and service uses in automobile insurance. Methods: This study used the claim data from Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service. A total of 189,912 inpatients and 1,550,497 outpatients who received Chuna therapy covered by automobile insurance in oriental medical institutions were included. The analysis period was from July 2018 to December 2019, and a total of 18 months before and after April 2019, when Chuna therapy was covered by national health insurance. Interrupted time series analysis was applied to analyze the impact on the costs and service uses of Chuna therapy in automobile insurance before and after April 2019. Results: From July 2018 to December 2019, for 189,912 inpatients the cost and the number of times for Chuna therapy per capita were increased by 22.0% and decreased by 7.3% respectively right after the implementation of the policy. In the case of 1,550,497 outpatients, the cost of Chuna therapy per capita tends to be increased by 0.4% in overall study periods and increased 28.4% immediately after the implementation of the policy. Meanwhile, the number of times and visits for Chuna therapy per capita tends to be increased by 0.4% in overall study periods but decreased by 0.4% after the implementation of the policy. Conclusion: Results suggest that if the national health insurance coverage of oriental medicine services increases according to the policy stance for benefit expansion in national health insurance, the criteria for providing national health insurance benefits should be considered with the comprehensive impacts on the costs and service uses of automobile insurance.