New advisory committee to outline healthcare vision for Lee’s presidency

With the launch of the State Affairs Planning Advisory Committee, a de facto transition team that will chart the next five years of the Lee Jae-myung administration, attention has turned to the direction of healthcare policy.

The committee is an advisory body to President Lee to assist his administration, which took office without a presidential transition committee, in setting national tasks. The panel took office on Monday and has seven divisions for planning, economy, society, politics, administration, foreign relationships, and security.

The social subcommittee covers healthcare. The subcommittee includes Rep. Kang Sun-woo of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), secretary of the National Assembly's Health and Welfare Committee; former National Assembly member Choi Yeon-sook, a nurse, and Hong Kwon, President of the Korean Association of Primary Healthcare.

Hong was a professor of family medicine at the Catholic University of Korea College of Medicine, a policy member of the Healthcare Committee of the Citizens' Alliance for Economic Justice, and chairman of the Rokhyang Medical Foundation. Choi joined Lee Jae-myung's presidential campaign and served as the general election committee chairman of the DPK’s Daegu chapter.

Committee will outline priorities for fulfilling presidential campaign promises

The committee is expected to determine priorities based on Lee's promises as a presidential candidate.

As a candidate, Lee emphasized strengthening public healthcare to restore regional and essential healthcare and announced his intention to establish a public medical school and an academy to train human resources. 

Lee said he would focus on building a system encompassing public medical personnel selection, education, training, deployment, and management through a public medical academy. Rep. Kang introduced a bill for the Regional Doctor Training Act in February. It would have recruited some of the enrollment quotas in medical schools as regional doctors and required them to serve for 10 years in their regions.

Lee also pledged to strengthen state responsibility for medical accidents in the essential medical field, strengthen state compensation for force majeure medical accidents, and enhance the function of medical dispute mediation and arbitration centers. The Yoon administration also promoted these policies, so it is likely that they will continue to be promoted after changing the details.

In addition, the committee will likely discuss institutionalizing non-face-to-face medical treatment, establishing a public electronic prescription transmission system, building a stable supply system for essential drugs, creating a support system for innovative pharmaceutical companies, and strengthening the social responsibility of pharmaceutical companies, replenishing infrastructure for the next pandemic and strengthening international cooperation, establishing a support system for medical science convergence to foster research experts for physician-scientists, expanding integrated nursing and caregiving services, applying health insurance for care expenses, expanding home visits and home care by activating the customized primary care system, increasing expanding support for rare and incurable diseases, and implementing a national responsibility system for childhood obesity and diabetes.

The committee will also likely discuss government reorganization as a significant agenda item, so it will be interesting to see if the medical community's demand for a new “Ministry of Health” will also be included. Creating a health ministry is one of the top priorities of the Korean Medical Association ahead of the presidential election. However, the ruling DPK is skeptical about creating a ministry, and it was not included in the presidential campaign, making it unlikely to be realized.

The committee holds daily subcommittee meetings and receives work reports from ministries from Wednesday to Friday. Its statutory period of activity is 60 days, but it can be extended for up to 20 days at a time.