Sustainability enhancement measures for health insurance announced this month
Promoting speedy increase in medical school quota
Start integration of reservations for daycare centers and kindergartens
The government is moving forward the depletion point of the national pension, which is under severe financial pressure due to the low birth rate and aging population, from 2057. As the Yoon Seok-yeol administration has put forward pension reform as the three reform tasks, it is said that it will speed up the reform discussion by moving forward the announcement of the depletion point by one month in order to prepare the final plan by October.
On the 9th, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said in a New Year’s work report to the President, “We will promote pension reform to ensure financial sustainability, intergenerational fairness, and retirement income.”
President Yoon Seok-yeol, who has emphasized pension reform and health insurance reform, defined these two as ‘universal welfare’ in a business report that day. However, he pointed out that appropriate self-burden is inevitable here, and said, “A thorough scientific approach is needed.” He emphasized again, “I want to emphasize once again that it is difficult to play the role of such a state to bless the people if ideology, politics, and elections are involved here.”
The government’s fiscal estimate to be released this month is expected to include the expected depletion point of the national pension. In the 4th fiscal projections in 2018, the national pension was predicted to turn into a deficit in 2042 and be completely depleted in 2057. The National Assembly Budget Office considered 2055, earlier than this, as the point of exhaustion.
Considering that macroeconomic variables are unfavorable, such as the largest increase in annual pension benefits in 24 years due to inflation last year and the aging of the population at a faster rate than expected, the 5th estimate shows that the pension depletion period is at least 1 year from the 2018 forecast. There is an analysis that it will be advanced by more than ~2 years.
If the private advisory committee under the National Assembly reports a draft pension reform by the end of this month, the National Assembly’s special committee will collect public opinion and finalize the National Assembly bill by the end of April, the deadline for activities of the special committee. The government plans to submit a pension reform government bill to the National Assembly by October, separate from the National Assembly bill.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare announced that it would fully disclose the minutes of the meeting of the Financial Calculation Committee and broadcast the expert forum live, saying that it would transparently disclose the process of discussing pension reform. In addition, in the process of preparing the reform plan, discussions divided by region and age will be held and public discussions will be held.
The private advisory committee of the Special Pension Committee has proposed a parametric reform, which is a method of adjusting the national pension insurance premium rate (9%) and income replacement rate (40%), as the direction of pension reform in the interim report. There was also an opinion that the pension eligibility start age, which is gradually delayed to 65 by 2033 (63 years old as of this year), should be delayed to 67 years old, or the upper age limit for compulsory subscription should be raised, which is currently 59 years old.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare announced that it would come up with measures to improve health insurance finances this month and announce the ‘Health Insurance Comprehensive Plan’, the first health insurance reform plan of the Yoon Seok-yeol administration, after deliberation by the Health Insurance Policy Deliberation Committee in September.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare also plans to speed up key policies such as institutionalizing non-face-to-face treatment and increasing the number of medical schools by operating a regular consultative body with the medical community. We are also pushing for ‘integration of reservations’ to combine daycare centers and kindergarten courses into one.
Social services such as child care and childcare, which have been provided mainly to the vulnerable, will be expanded to include the middle class.