Starting this month, patients will have to pay 50% of the medicine fee, much higher from than the original 30%, if they receive treatment for a relatively “light ailment”. 52 illnesses have been classified as “light,””, and these include high blood pressure, side effects from a cold, indigestion, hives, osteoporosis and so on. In times when high prices make living hard, and the income of the common class is decreasing, this decision to increase medicine prices seems absurd.
It is said that South Koreans go to big scale university hospitals even when they catch a cold and are only slightly sick. This phenomenon is more severe in our country than in others. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, 26% of the out-patient services were light illnesses that could have been treated just as well at a local clinic. The government has judged that local clinics are not able to develop because of this tendency to only go to major hospitals. Therefore, they are using a simple logic, which is the idea that “iIf we raise the medicine cost in big-scale hospitals, people won’t go there anymore.” Some are also pointing out that the government decided to raise prices due to health insurance budget deficits.
Among the illnesses for which the medicine costs are expected to rise, there are relatively light or mild sicknesses such as indigestion, constipation, diarrhea, or rash. However, illnesses such as diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, bladder infection, stomach ulcer and so on, which could become a serious threat to the patient’s health if left untreated. For those who already went to a local clinic in the first place, the rise in medicine cost won’t matter as much, since they already know a clinic that they can have faith in, knowing that they will receive proper treatment. However, for patients who can’t help but find a local clinic due to raised medicine costs, it could take a considerable amount of time for them to find a clinic they can trust. If these patients have a serious illness, the time spent in finding a clinic could also be time for the disease to growget worse.
The main reason that most patients prefer a big scale university hospital is because of the poor service offered by local clinics. There is a problem in the government’s attitude of increasing the burden of patients instead of trying to solve the fundamental problem, which is the poor level of local clinics. A policy that will improve the level of treatment and service in local clinics is needed.
A way to do this is to make use of the medical facility authentication system. In the past, only facilities that could accommodate over 300 people were targets of evaluation, but now the range has been expanded to about 2700 medical facilities. Starting from 2013, sanatoriums and mental hospitals will also be targets for evaluation. The quality of many small and medium sized hospitals was able to be managed due to this system. If this system were to be applied to local clinics, those clinics would be investigated and evaluated by experts sent from the health department. This could stimulate local clinics to improve their treatment and various services. Through this sort of system, clinics will receive an authentication mark which will help to promote and publicize the clinic, attracting many new patients.
Though it is true that more people need to make use of local clinics, the government is approaching the problem the wrong way. Making people pay more money for their medicine will only cause more distrust towards the government. Therefore, the government and local hospitals need to cooperate to bring up the level of treatment in clinics. Simply blocking patients from going to big hospitals by raising medicine costs is an act of violating the freedom that patients have in being able to choose the medical service they wish to receive.

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