“Gov’t to abolish discrimination against mentally ill” but…

“Gov’t to abolish discrimination against mentally ill”

Strengthening primary care for mental health, but focusing only on medical care instead of comprehensive approach including prevention, health promotion, and rehabilitation…

‪#‎mental_health‬, ‪#‎primary_care‬, ‪#‎rehabilitation‬, ‪#‎health_promotion‬

 

Gov’t to abolish discrimination against mentally ill

Measures set to improve mental health

By Lee Kyung-min

The Ministry of Health and Welfare said Thursday that it will change rules and systems that may discriminate against people with mental health issues, in an attempt to help such people receive necessary treatment without fear of being disadvantaged in insurance or employment.

This is part of the government’s measures to help people with such problems, amid growing concerns that an increasing number of suicides occur due to mental illness.

“In Korea, people with mental health problems are reluctant to seek help from psychiatrists due to social stigma,” a ministry official said. “Medical records of their treatment have also often caused discrimination against them in getting jobs or insurance coverage.”

The government will run awareness campaigns to tackle prejudice against these people, encouraging them to seek treatment earlier before their problems worsen.

People will be able to consult doctors at internal medicine clinics about depression or anxiety, rather than psychiatrists, considering many with mental illness suffer from physical symptoms as well, including sleep disorders.

With the measures, the government plans to lower the suicide rate from the current 27.3 out of 100,000 people to 20 by 2020.

According to the ministry’s latest survey in 2011, 24.7 percent of Koreans suffer from mental health problems including anxiety, alcoholism and eating disorders at least once in their lifetimes.

 

 

“Over half of Koreans negative about migrant workers” (Korea Herald)

“Over half of Koreans negative about migrant workers” (Korea Herald)

‪#‎Korea‬, ‪#‎migrant‬, ‪#‎migrant_worker‬, ‪#‎globalization‬

Over half of Koreans negative about migrant workers

(Yonhap)
More than half of Koreans have a negative attitude towards foreign workers residing here, a recent survey showed.

In a survey by local pollster Gallup Korea, 54 percent of respondents said that the migration of foreign workers to Korea is “not a good thing.” The study was conducted on 1,500 Koreans aged 19 and above.

Thirty-nine percent said that it is a “good thing,” which is significantly lower than the 57 percent average across the 69 countries that participated in this global survey. The remaining 7 percent could not decide on the matter.

The survey, carried out from October to November last year, had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

South Koreans’ perception of migrant workers appears to have turned sour compared to 20 years ago, the pollster said. In a similar survey conducted in 1994, 50 percent of respondents were favorable towards foreign workers.

According to Statistics Korea, the foreign population working in Korea stood at 938,000 as of last May, with the number having increased every year since 2010.

Among the 69 countries surveyed, China was the most positive about the issue with 81 percent answering in favor of migrant workers. Thailand was the most negative, with 78 percent in disapproval.

By Ock Hyun-ju (laeticia.ock@heraldcorp.com)

“Number of elderly people living alone skyrockets more than 1,300%”

“Number of elderly people living alone skyrockets more than 1,300%”
‪#‎Korea‬ ‪#‎elderly‬ ‪#‎welfare‬

 

Number of elderly people living alone skyrockets more than 1,300%

In S. Korea, more people are living alone, and growth is particularly fast among elderly people

An elderly man carries winter relief supplies he received from the Korea Red Cross up a staircase in Seoul’s Yongsan district.

The number of single-person households composed of people 65 years or older has multiplied 13 times over the past 25 years, a government report says.According to a recent report titled “Changes in Marriage and Childbirth Behavior Resulting from Family Changes and Policy Recommendations,” the number of elderly single-person households increased by 1,320% between 1985 and 2010. The report was written by a group of researchers headed up by Lee Sam-sik from the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA).This growth occurred much more quickly than non-elderly single-person households, which increased by 470%. Elderly households have also come to represent a larger proportion of all single-person households, increasing from 17.4% in 1985 to 32.9% in 2010.The number and percentage of elderly people who were left alone after a divorce or bereavement and are living apart from their children in the city is increasing rapidly, the report found.The researchers based their analysis on the raw data (a 1% sample) from a population and housing survey by Statistics Korea.There was a particularly sharp increase in single-person households consisting of elderly women, which jumped from 24.2% of all single-person households in 1985 to 46.8%. Single-person households consisting of elderly men increased from 5.3% to 14.6%.As of 2010, 31.8% of elderly men living alone had a job, compared to 23.4% of elderly women living alone. The implication is that the rest of these households were depending on their savings, pension or support from their children.“Attention should be paid to the fact that, even among single-person households, the elderly need not only economic support but also assistance with health care,” the report said.There was also a huge jump in single-person households in other age groups between 1985 and 2010, with the number of unmarried men in their 30s and 40s living by themselves increasing by factors of 19.4 and 62.3, respectively. Unmarried women in their 30s and 40s living by themselves increased by a factor of 11.7 and 20.6, respectively. This is presumed to be a consequence of the tendency for South Koreans to marry later in life.Among single-person households consisting of divorcees, the fastest rate of growth outside of the elderly age group was seen in men in their 40s, with their number growing by a factor of 24.5.The number of single-person households in South Korea has been steadily increasing, from 660,000 in 1985 to 4.14 million in 2010. By last year, the number had increased to 5.06 million, according to an estimate by Statistics Korea.By Hwangbo Yon, staff reporterPlease direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

“Korea Passed New Law for Promotion of Medical Tourism”

“Korea Passed New Law for Promotion of Medical Tourism”

Is medical tourism new (but small) medical imperialism?

‪#‎Korea‬, ‪#‎medical_tourism‬, ‪#‎neoliberalism‬, ‪#‎globalization‬

 

Medical Industry Act

Korea Passed New Law for Promotion of Medical Tourism

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA
4 December 2015 – 2:30pm
Jung Suk-yee

The Act on Overseas Medical Expansion and Foreign Patient Attraction Support passed the plenary session of the National Assembly on Dec. 2. It is expected that the act will allow more than 160 domestic medical institutions to go abroad and at least 500,000 foreign patients to visit Korea by 2017.

According to the act, medical institutions wishing to go abroad can benefit from financial and tax incentives based on relevant laws such as the Export-Import Bank of Korea Act. Similar benefits go to agencies attracting foreign patients, too. In addition, medical advertisements are allowed at duty-free stores, airports, ports and the like and those patients returning to their countries after treatments in Korea can get follow-up services in their countries by means of telemedicine. The globalization of Korea’s medical industry is expected to result in the creation of up to 50,000 jobs a year.

The medical tourism market of Korea is growing at a rapid pace these days but still lagging behind those of Thailand, Singapore, etc. Over two million foreign tourists visit Thailand a year and the size of its medical tourism market already exceeds 3 trillion won (US$3 billion). Likewise, more than one million people arrive in Singapore each year for the same purpose. Medical Tourism in India, Malaysia and the Philippines are showing a double-digit growth and the Japanese and Chinese governments are trying hard to catch up with them.

Experts point out that Korea needs to provide personalized medical services, work on diverse medical tourism resources and build specialized brands if it is to remain in the game. According to the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade, Korea ranks 19th out of the 34 OECD member countries in terms of overall medical tourism competitiveness. Specifically, Korea ranks second in facility and equipment, fourth in medical service, ninth in technological level but 31st in human resources and 33rd in industrial growth potential.

A key solution to this problem is digital healthcare characterized by telemedicine. In this regard, Korea signed cooperation agreements with the Czech Republic, Vietnam, the Philippines, Peru, Brazil and China this year. The Severance Hospital, Gacheon Gil Hospital, Hanyang University Hospital and many more are expected to expand their business abroad based on the MOUs.

Digital healthcare will provide personalized healthcare and medical services by combining medical care with ICT. The medical industry is focusing on it as a new paradigm because it can contribute to disease prevention and management, higher medical service quality and lower medical costs. Korea, which is home to excellent medical workers and advanced ICT, can get the inside track in this field

– See more at: http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/industry/13199-medical-industry-act-korea-passed-new-law-promotion-medical-tourism#sthash.W3haN3nA.dpuf

 

Review of Korea Health system

Republic of Korea Health System Review

Health Systems in Transition. Vol.5 No.4 2015,

Asia Pacific Observatory on Health Systems and Policies

 

Abstract

The Republic of Korea has achieved a rapid improvement in health outcomes thanks to economic development and universal health coverage through national health insurance. It achieved universal coverage of the population in 1989, just 12 years after the introduction of social health insurance. In 2000, all insurance schemes were merged into a single payer with a uniform contribution schedule and benefits coverage. Despite universal coverage of the population, financial protection and high OOP payments have remained a key policy issue. Health-care delivery relies heavily on private providers. This system induces demand for new, though sometimes not cost-effective, services and technologies not yet in the national health insurance benefit package because they are not subject to fee regulation. The referral system does not function well in the private sector-dominated delivery system. Tension between private providers and the Government has been substantial, and providers have been a stumbling block to health care reforms such as the prospective payment system. In contrast to rapid economic growth and decreasing inequality until the 1980s, inequality has been increasing since the 1990s. Policy to reduce the inequality in health care and health outcomes should be a priority for the Government. Rapid ageing of the population is a challenge to the health-care system, and the new long-term care insurance improves access for older people to long-term care. Coordination between hospitals and long-term care facilities along with strengthening of primary health care and gatekeeping can contribute to the continuum of care to meet the needs of an older population.

Korean government’s “welfare spending and allocation still inadequate” (The Hankyoreh)

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/731676.html

Posted on Feb.23, 2016

South Korea far below OECD average in welfare spending, and policies failing to address poverty and inequality

South Korean spending on public and social welfare amounted to 9.33% of gross domestic product in 2013, while the welfare and taxation system has fallen severely short in relieving poverty and inequality.These were among the findings in a report titled 2013 South Korean Social Welfare Expenditures written last year by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA) commissioned by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. The ministry and KIHASA plan to officially submit the results to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) next month.

Poverty rate in OECD member countries
Public and social welfare spending yet to pass 10% of GDP
According to the KIHASA report, South Korean public and social welfare spending for 2013 totaled 133.4 trillion won (US$108.7 billion), or 9.33% of GDP. The rate was up 0.51 percentage points from the year before, but still hovered below the 10% of GDP mark. The 2012 average for other OECD countries stood at 21.6%.In the past, the South Korean government has announced public and social welfare spending rates of 9.6% of GDP in 2012 and 10.2% in 2013, with a projected 10.4% rate for 2014. The figures in the KIHASA report were the result of a new analysis using the manual and then altered to conform to OECD standards.A detailed breakdown of public and social welfare spending showed 51 trillion won (US$41.6 billion) in general central and local government social welfare expenditures and 81.6 trillion won (US$66.5 billion) in social insurance expenditures, including health insurance and the public pension. Legally prescribed private social welfare expenditures, or the sum of severance pay and retirement pensions, stood at 10.6 trillion won (US$8.6 billion), or 0.74% of GDP. Taken together, the figures show South Korean social welfare expenditures – including public and social welfare spending and legally prescribed private social welfare spending – totaling 144 trillion won (US$117.4 billion), or 10.07% of GDP.“Public and social welfare spending is a statistic that shows the extent to which the government guarantees against societal risks, but in South Korea that number has yet to pass 10% of GDP,” said KIHASA research Ko Kyung-hwan, who oversaw the analysis.“If we consider the social services spending demanded by an aging society, it’s clear that we need more active measures to allocate welfare finances,” Ko added.
South Korean welfare expenditure
Welfare and taxation failing to address poverty and inequality
The report also noted that despite tax measures and continued increases in social spending since the foreign exchange crisis of the late ’90s, South Korea‘s current welfare and taxation systems are failing to do much to alleviate inequality or poverty. The Gini coefficient – a measure that rates income inequality on a scale from zero to one, with higher numbers indicating greater inequality – was calculated at 0.338 for market income in terms of the 2012 median household income. For disposable income, or market income with taxes and social insurance premiums subtracted and the welfare benefits like the basic or national pension added in, the number was 0.307. The difference of just 0.031 percentage points between the values for market and disposable income mean that the social service and tax systems haven’t contributed significantly to relieving inequality. In advanced economies, market income inequality is greatly reduced through the social service and tax systems.Take Denmark: the country, which ranks first for having the world’s lowest inequality, had a high market income Gini coefficient of 0.436, but the social security system and tax measures there have resulted in a much lower disposable income coefficient of 0.249. The US, in contrast, had both a high market income coefficient of 0.513 and a high disposable income coefficient of 0.39 – making it one of the most unequal countries in the world.South Korea’s social service and tax systems have also done little to lower the poverty rate. Two values were calculated for the country‘s poverty rate, or the percentage of people earning less than 50% the median income for 2012: a market income poverty rate of 16.5% and a disposable income poverty rate of 14.6%. In other words, the poverty reduction effect from the social service and tax systems amounted to just 1.9 percentage points. The country also ranked 26th out of the 29 countries analyzed for disposable income poverty rate. Sweden had a difference of 17.1 percentage points between the former and latter, Great Britain 20.2 percentage points.At the Hankyoreh’s request, KIHASA conducted another poverty rate analysis only for the working-age population of those 15 and older. The results were a market income poverty rate of 10% and a disposable income poverty rate of 10.9% – meaning the situation was actually worse. The numbers show that government welfare spending through taxation and the social security system is channeled many toward disadvantaged segments, with little made available to the working poor or other working-age South Koreans.
Senior support ratio expected to skyrocket in four years
South Korea is poised for an explosive rise in its senior citizen support ratio between 2020 and 2030, as the roughly nine million baby boomers born between 1955 and 1964 reach the age of 65. The senior support ratio represents the number of people aged 65 or older for every 100 member of the productive population aged 15 to 64. The 2015 rate stood at 17.9%; in 2020, it is expected to pass 20% for the first time at around 22.2%. By 2030, it is predicted to soar to around 38% – a number that would put it ahead of Sweden (37%), Great Britain (35%), and the US (33.8%).
By Lee Chang-gon, staff reporter
Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]