기사한줄요약
게시물 내용
The South Korean government once again inflict a penalty to foreigners with foreign national health insurance, which has been profitable of hundreds of billions of won.
The government decided to add a condition that foreigners must stay in Korea for six months or more to register to national health insurance as a dependent in Korean employee health insurance.
The government has been preparing measures to prevent foreigners from using national health insurance free of charge and wasting national health insurance finances.
It is difficult to accept that the Korean government agrees with the false claims of some Koreans.
Dependents are people who depend on their children or family members for their livelihood. Since they have no income, they are receiving the national health insurance benefits as a family member of the person who makes money.
Anyone can become a dependent, regardless of whether they are Korean or foreign, as long as they meet certain income standards, property standards, and support requirements.
The income standard is 20 million won, and if the income exceeds this limit, even parents will be deprived of their dependent status and have to pay a separate national health insurance premium.
Nevertheless, foreigners are facing various disadvantages just because of the difficulties to verify their income and property. No matter how poor foreign residents are, if they are local subscribers, they must pay about 130,000 won in health insurance premiums per person. Since the average insurance premium paid by Koreans is about 130,000 won, foreigners are also asked to pay this way.
For local subscribers who are not included as an employee health insurance, all adult family members cannot register as dependents. For example, a woman in her 70s and a father in his 50s living with a 20-year-old child must each pay their fees and in total 390,000 won, which is the health insurance premium of three people. It is a huge discrimination compared to Koreans.
Based on this, the Korean government is seeing a huge finance profit in national health insurance for foreigners. Korea's national health insurance finances recorded a surplus of 232 billion won in 2018, 373.6 billion won in 2019, and 587.5 billion won in 2020. The accumulated surplus over the past three years has reached 1.193.1 trillion won.
In particular, as of December 2019, the number of dependents per foreign employee insured was only 0.39, which is only 37% of the number of Koreans.
Nevertheless, the government is again implementing a policy that gives foreigners a disadvantage, saying that they are making short in the national health insurance’s finances.
An official from the Ministry of Health and Welfare said, “Spouse and minor children often live together with someone who holds the foreign employee health insurance, so there are exceptions. And dependent status for Parents with adult children, siblings, and other family members are moving toward granting it after six months of residency entering into Korea.”
Reporter Hasung Song
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