20 years have passed since the National Medical Insurance System was introduced to Korea.
Though the Korean National Medical Insurance System(KNMIS), which can be summarized as the low-premium, low-benefit, and low-medical fee system, has satisfied the demand for the baisc health services, there have been lots of complaints from the suppliers of the health services, the patients and the insurers.
In my research, I analyzed the problems of the KNMIS with the several aspects and the general profiles by year using time-series data.
The focus of my rescarch is on finding out the determinants of the medical expenses for the deterrence of the rapidly increasing medical expenses and the optimal scale of the medical insurance societies for the self-employed.
For the empirical analysis, I performed the panel study using the panel data of the medical insurance societics for the self-employed (urban & rural) during 1992-1994.
I found the determinants of the medical expenses as the number of the organization and width covered by the individual societies, the number of the hospital beds, the number of the medical facilities and the frequency of utilization of the societies.
And the optimal scale for the medical insurance societies for the self-employed, which nunimizes the average cost & gets the economy of scale, turned out to be twice as lagre as the current scale.
Based on the estimation, I suggested several policy proposal for the deterrence of the medical expenses and the efficient operation of the medical insurance societies for the self-employed.
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