South Korea to expand health insurance income settlement system

South Korean health insurance authorities are pursuing a plan to expand the income settlement system to all citizens. The initiative aims to improve fairness and equity by transitioning from a voluntary application-based system to an automatic, authority-led settlement process using income data verified by administrative agencies.

Under the proposed system, the National Health Insurance Service would receive confirmed annual income data from the National Tax Service to perform automatic settlements once a year. The scope of the settlement includes 9.08 million local subscriber households and 1.1 million employees with income outside of their primary salaries.

An analysis by the National Health Insurance Service indicates that approximately 3.94 million local subscriber households would be required to pay an additional 3.29 trillion won due to increased income. Conversely, 2.32 million households would be eligible for refunds totaling approximately 1.8 trillion won due to decreased income. The net increase in health insurance finances is estimated to be around 1.5 trillion won.

The authorities plan to utilize the projected 1.5 trillion won in additional revenue to support regional and essential medical systems, as well as to strengthen coverage for rare and severe diseases.