Business Community: "Next Year's Health Insurance Premium Increase Is Excessive... Only Beneficiaries and Providers Considered"

[Asia Economy Reporter Woo Su-yeon] On the 27th, the business community expressed deep regret over the Ministry of Health and Welfare's decision to raise the health insurance premium rate by 2.89% next year, stating that the excessive premium rate increase was made based solely on the positions of beneficiaries and providers.

Until now, the business community, including the Korea Employers Federation and the Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business, has demanded a freeze on health insurance premium rates, arguing that due to the worst economic and employment crisis caused by the COVID-19 shock, the burden capacity of pure payers such as companies and households has reached its limit.

The Korea Employers Federation stated, "From now on, the government needs to comprehensively adjust the plan to expand coverage rather than mechanically increasing premium rates, recognizing that the pandemic situation may become prolonged and recurrent." It added, "Along with this, a prompt policy shift should be considered to reasonably manage expenditures based on premium rates that companies and households can bear."

It continued, "Since subscriber representatives are only a minority, the current premium rate decision structure, in which the subscribers' positions cannot be reflected at all during the premium rate deliberation process, should be completely reviewed so that the will of the people can be balancedly reflected according to financial contributions."

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