• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.31-44
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• 2021

The net function of the domestic medical insurance system is highly regarded, but due to the problem of incomplete coverage, the public wants to secure coverage through private medical insurance subscription. As a result, the subscription rate of private medical insurance has recently increased, and the billing rate has also increased. As the number of people seeking private medical insurance increased, workers at private medical insurance companies are experiencing increased job stress and side effects, especially for insurance reviewers who are in charge of paying insurance, such as communicating with customers who claimed insurance and contributing to the company's profit. In response, this study analyzed the effects of job stress on mental health of insurance reviewers and conducted a descriptive survey study to reduce job stress of insurance reviewers and promote mental health. The analysis shows that job stress for insurance reviewers has a significant impact on mental health (+). In detail, job stress has a significant impact on all four factors: social performance and self-confidence, depression, sleeping disturbance and anxiety, and general well-being and vitality. This study showed that job stress in insurance reviewers has a significant (+) impact on mental health. Job stress can cause side effects in organizational aspects, such as reducing enthusiasm for job performance and increasing turnover and resignation rates, but it can also worsen individual physical health and cause diseases such as depression and anxiety, causing mental health to be impoverished. Therefore, in order to prevent this, appropriate work stress prevention methods and countermeasures should be provided to help reduce work stress and improve mental health.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.9-35
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• 2007

The Health care program in Korea has now been systemized after 30 years of declaring the inauguration of the national health insurance system by the current government. The national health care covering all Korean citizens was achieved after 12 years of implementing the national health insurance and the health care program since 1977. Hundreds of multiple operational agencies managing the insured individually had undergone the amalgamation process from 1998 to 2000, and had been restructured as one agency, the National Health Insurance Corporation. In 2003, the community/area based financial management was also merged together with the employment based financial management. The National health care system of Korea offer various merits, compared with that of other countries, such as health care provision covering all Koreans, low insurance premium, accessibility of medical services/facilities etc. However, there are still some weak features which need to be addressed for improvement; below expectation insurance cover system, mistrust on the medical services, low medical charges resulted from excessive restrictions, and unstable financial status of the national health insurance etc. Therefore, the National health care system should continue to evolve to re-establish itself as more effective national health care system by further strengthening its merits, and by improving its weaknesses; with adopting the positive system to optimize the costs of prescribed medicines/drugs, applying simpler insurance coverage system to calculate the optimum medical charges, promoting private medical insurances, and increasing insurance premium etc.

• Journal of Korean society of Dental Hygiene
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.531-538
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• 2016

Objectives: The purpose of the study is to investigate recognition and adequacy of dental service providers regarding dental prosthodontic treatment covered by dental auto insurance system. Methods: A self-reported questionnaire was completed by 320 dentists and dental hygienists in Seoul, Gyeonggido, and Incheon from February 22 to March 21, 2016. The questionnaire consisted of recognition and needs of auto insurance (4 items), and recognition of prosthodontic treatment covered by dental auto insurance system. Likert five point scale was used in the questionnaire. Data were analyzed by SPSS 21.0 program. Cronbach's alpha was 0.856 in the study. Results: The average of recognition was 2.62 and that of adequacy of auto insurance coverage was 1.98. The reasonable price of crown treatment was from 400,000 to 500,000 Korean Won in 67.9 percent of the dentists. But 49.8 percent of the dental hygienists answered that the reasonable price of crown was 300,000 to 400,000 Korean Won. The dentists preferred to treatment fee covered by dental auto insurance. The dental hygienists had a preference to combination of dental auto insurance and medical insurance fee. Conclusions: The opinion of the dental care providers should be considered and the adequate coverage of insurance would improve the dental health care.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.451-459
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• 2020

Background: Although Korean government have been adopting several policies to expand coverage of National Health Insurance (NHI) program, the coverage rate is still below average across Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries. This study was to identify public perception on appropriateness of coinsurance rate and factors associated with coinsurance rate in National Health Insurance. Methods: For this cross-sectional study, 507 participants over aged 20 years were recruited from telephone surveys. Respondents experienced at least one and more visiting medical facilities due to medical problems in last 12 months. Demographic factors, socioeconomic positions, and experiences on medical utilization were measured in order to identify factors associated with perception appropriateness of coinsurance rate. Results: The 49.9% (n=209) of the public responded that the coinsurance rate of NHI program was appropriate. There were no differences in positive perception according to socio-demographic factors and experiences on medical utilization except for gender, residential area, and felt expensive when using medical services. People who felt burden of medical expenditure were more likely to perceive coinsurance rate inappropriate (odds ratio, 2.33; 95% confidence interval, 1.52-3.58) Conclusion: In spite of the relatively low coverage rate of NHI, this study identified that 49.9% of the public perceived the current coinsurance rate was adequate. However, people who felt the burden of medical expenditure were still had a negative perception of the coinsurance rate needed to decrease the coinsurance rate.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.191-198
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• 2017

Moon Jae-in Government announced the Government's 5-Year Plan on July 19, 2017, President Moon directly announced the Government's Plan for Benefit Expansion in National Health Insurance on August 7, 2017. The main contents of the announced expansion include benefit coverage for all medically necessary services with control over non-covered service occurrence, a decrease in the cost-sharing upper limit, and monetary support for catastrophic medical costs. Although past governments have been continuously striving for benefit expansion in the last 15 years, this plan has its breakthrough aspect in that all medical services will be covered by the National Health Insurance. In alignment, there are important tasks to solve: attaining a proper fee schedule, reforming the healthcare delivery system, and improving healthcare quality. This plan is a symptom oriented action in that it is limited in reducing patients' out-of-pocket money, unlike the systematic approach of the National Health Insurance. The sustainability of the National Health Insurance is being threatened due to South Korea's low birth rate, rapidly aging society, and low economic growth, in addition to the unification issue of the Korean Peninsula, medical utilization of the elderly, management of non-communicable diseases, and so on. Therefore, the Government needs to plan the National Health Insurance system reformation including actions addressed toward medical consumers.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.208-220
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• 2019

Purpose: This study aimed to determine health problems experienced by workers in special employment relationships (WSER) and identify coping strategies used when such problems occur. Methods: This qualitative study used the focus group interview method. Thirteen study participants included five home-visit tutors, five insurance salespersons, and three credit card recruiters. The interviews were conducted from November 2018 through January 2019, with each occupational group interview lasting about 2 hours. Analysis based on phenomenological research was independently performed by two researchers. Results: Most participants had common health problems involving vocal cord symptoms, and stress related to emotional labor and traffic accidents. The unique health problems included cystitis, musculoskeletal, and digestive symptoms in home-visit tutors; reduced vision and hearing in insurance salespersons; and mental distress in credit card recruiters. There was no protection system for their health coverage, and the company emphasized their self-employed status to avoid taking responsibility for them. Twelve participants did not purchase occupational accident insurance owing to both not having adequate information and economic burden concerning premium status. Conclusion: WSER experienced both physical and mental health problems. These problems were caused by their unstable employment status, and the social security system for their coverage being non-functioning.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.13-26
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• 2018

Objectives: This study investigated how Korean daily newspapers frame the present government's health insurance coverage expansion policy, Moon Jae-in Care. Methods: A contents analysis was conducted to construct news frames represented in the four Korean daily newspapers' editorials and columns on Moon Jae-in Care during from April 2017 to April 2018. News text was classified into three different layers of frames: expressive element, narrative structure, and implied values. Results: The analysis revealed that the frequency of narrative frames was as follows: health system improvement (20.8%), public burden (14.6%), opposition by doctors (14.6%), and populism (12.5%). The financial sustainability accounted for 41.7% of the value frame, followed by procedural legitimation (18.8%), and coverage expansion (16.7%). The results also revealed that reported frames were different among newspapers: Chosun Ilbo tended to report in a negative tone, while Hankyoreh shinmun and Kyunghyang shinmun used a positive tone. Conclusions: This finding suggests that there are salient framings in reports on Moon Jae-in Care. Based on the results, the government needs to present a detailed financing plan on Moon Jae-in Care in detail. I discussed another implication of media frames results.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.13
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• pp.5265-5270
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• 2014

Background: In Korea, the National Health Insurance program has initiated various copayment policies over a decade in order to alleviate patient financial burden. This study investigated healthcare spending and utilization in the last 12 months of life among patients who died with lung cancer by various copayment policy windows. Materials and Methods: We performed a retrospective cohort study using nationwide lung cancer health insurance claims data from 2002 to 2012. We used descriptive and multivariate methods to compare spending measured by total costs, payer costs, copayments, and utilization (measured by length of stay or outpatient days). Using 1,4417,380 individual health insurance claims (inpatients: 673,122, outpatients: 744,258), we obtained aggregated healthcare spending and utilization of 155,273 individual patient (131,494 inpatient and 103,855 outpatient) records. Results: National spending and utilization is growing, with a significant portion of inpatient healthcare spending and utilization occurring during the end-of-life period. Specifically, inpatients were more likely to have more spending and utilization as they got close to death. As coverage expanded, copayments decreased, but overall costs increased due to increased utilization. The trends were the same in both inpatient and outpatient services. Multivariate analysis confirmed the associations. Conclusions: We found evidence of the higher end of life healthcare spending and utilizations in lung cancer patients occurring as coverage expanded. The practice pattern within a hospital might be influenced by coverage policies. Health policy makers should consider initiating various health policies since these influence the long-term outcomes of service performance and overall healthcare spending and utilization.

• 대한예방의학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.350-350
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• 2005

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.3-45
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• 2019

Health insurance is the main instrument to protect the people against sickness. To examine the task of in the future it would be necessary to extract and understand the components formed in its formation and development, benefit related and normative characteristics of the health insurance itself. The health insurance oriented itself to the universal coverage at a law level. Paradoxically this worked positively for the universal development of the health insurance. The task of the health insurance is on the one hand universal, positive and open. On the other hand it has to shape type of allowed method, art and content of the medical treatments into the regulation to ensure the equal benefit as well as the financial stability. That is, the health insurance should check the aberrant medical treatment, and at the same time should be compensated for the their necessity and effectiveness. However there are always some structural differences between both requirements. This article aims to restate and analyse the development of the health insurance, based on the characteristics formed hitherto show the way to reform the health insurance. The problem to enhance the coverage of health insurance, its institutional as well as financial crisis, its peculiar governance would be handled.