Healthcare reform backlash: doctors slam plans as profit-driven, anti-patient

The medical community called for the government to withdraw its plan to improve unreimbursed treatment and actual cost insurance, criticizing that it only aggravates the situation.

In a news release issued on Friday, the Korean Medical Association (KMA) demanded that the Special Committee on Healthcare Reform, directly under the president, retract the reform plan announced Thursday.

“It is a backward and anti-human rights policy that does not consider people's health rights and a policy that only represents the interests of insurance companies affiliated with family-run conglomerates called chaebol,” the KMA said.

The committee's policy proposal included establishing managed benefits for unreimbursed items, banning parallel medical treatment, and differentiating severe and non-severe cases in the actual cost insurance.

The nation’s largest doctors group said it believes that the policy proposal's focus on restricting unreimbursed treatments will increase people’s healthcare expenses, make it difficult for medical institutions to provide adequate medical services, and seriously threaten people's right to health by restricting their medical choices.

“At the core of the problem of overusing unreimbursed treatments is the product design problem of insurers,” it said. “However, the health authorities have turned a blind eye to this and demonstrate a government-dictated system in which the state controls the private contract between medical institutions and patients.”

The government's strengthening the management of unreimbursed treatments is “an illegal policy that infringes on people's health rights and property rights,” it pointed out, adding that it will “lead to a decline in the quality of medical care and restrict patients' medical choices.”

The KMA noted that it is also inappropriate to continue operating the “presidential committee” when President Yoon Suk Yeol has been suspended from office.

“The government should admit its mistakes and withdraw the actual cost insurance reform policy that will only benefit the chaebol insurers,” it said.

Civic groups attack reform plan as a ‘coup d’etat for privatizing healthcare’ by Yoon administration

Civic organizations also resisted the government's medical insurance reform plan, calling it a “medical privatization coup.”

“The policies proposed to control unreimbursed treatments are mostly aimed at resolving complaints from insurers,” said the Korean Federation of Medical Activist Groups for Health Rights in a news release on Friday.

The federation noted that the “parallel care payment restriction” is designed to maximize insurers' profits by applying only to some items with high losses, and the managed reimbursement is designed to control items with high losses in actual cost insurance.

“What is needed is a policy of rapid and full reimbursement of unreimbursed treatments and eliminating unproven unreimbursed items. However, the government has yet to come up with such a plan. This is because private insurers can make money only when there is a large market for unreimbursed treatment,” the federation pointed out.

The reform plan focuses on maximizing the profit of actual cost insurance, it said, calling for sanctions against insurers who refuse to pay claims to severely ill patients.

“The Yoon administration, which is destroying health insurance and promoting false healthcare reforms that only benefit private insurers, must step down immediately,” it said. “The Special Committee for Healthcare Reform, which exists only for the benefit of the health industry and private insurers, must be disbanded immediately. Stop Yoon's healthcare privatization coup immediately.”