Rights Commission and National Health Insurance Service Collaborate to Resolve Health Insurance Complaints

Signing of a Business Agreement for 'Protecting National Rights and Realizing the Social Value of Public Institutions'

Eunjung Park, Chairperson of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission. / Photo by Honam Moon munonam@

[Asia Economy Reporter Moon Chaeseok] The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) announced on the 15th that it will begin collaboration with the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) to respond to grievances in the health insurance sector.

On the same day, the ACRC announced that it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with NHIS at the Government Seoul Office Building to "protect citizens' rights and realize the social value of public institutions."

Through this agreement, the two organizations plan to cooperate more actively to ▲ effectively and efficiently resolve and respond to grievances ▲ mutually utilize and support consulting and training programs to strengthen capabilities for effectively addressing repetitive or unusual complaints ▲ discover and prepare alternatives for institutional improvements to protect citizens' health rights.

The ACRC and NHIS have created an opportunity through this agreement to increase the number of grievance cases handled, improve acceptance rates, and discover and prepare alternatives for institutional improvements to protect citizens' health rights.

With the two organizations able to smoothly cooperate on education and consulting related to special grievances, it is expected that special grievance resolution and administrative efficiency will improve.

Chairperson Park Eun-jung of the ACRC said, "Since National Health Insurance is an essential system in our lives, we must actively reflect citizens' voices in grievances to create a better social security system," adding, "The two organizations will cooperate to actively and promptly resolve grievances and improve the system."

Kim Yong-ik, NHIS Director, said, "Due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, grievances have shifted to non-contact methods such as phone and fax," and added, "I hope that today's cooperation between the two organizations will be a starting point to enhance professional capabilities in grievance response and provide better services to the public."

The ACRC resolved 158 out of 298 grievances raised in the health insurance sector over the past three years from 2017 to last year. To fundamentally address frequently occurring grievances, it recommended 11 institutional improvements.

The major resolved grievances include ▲ adjustment and installment payment of insurance premiums due to financial difficulties ▲ release of seizure due to arrears ▲ refund of overpaid health insurance premiums.

Representative institutional improvements include ▲ establishment of a mobile text message notification system for changes in subscriber status ▲ recommendations for improvements to recognize common-law spouses with different addresses as dependents.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.