Where are you going to the university hospital? Your medical expenses are up to 2.5 times different

A civic group survey found that the health insurance coverage rate of private university hospitals is about 5% lower than that of national university hospitals, so the burden of medical expenses on patients is relatively high.

On the 22nd, the Citizens’ Federation for Economic Justice Practice surveyed a total of 74 university hospitals affiliated with medical schools with a general hospital level or higher, including 14 national universities and 60 private universities. Said it was high.

The investigation was conducted based on the accounting data of medical institutions reported to the Ministry of Health and Welfare by each university hospital for 4 years from 2016 to 2019 and the amount of health insurance payments paid to hospitals by the National Health Insurance Corporation.

As a result of the survey, the overall health insurance coverage rate of all university hospitals was 64.7% on average, and about 80 trillion won of medical expenses were obtained through health insurance patients for four years, of which about 28 trillion won were directly borne by patients.

Gyeongsilryeon explained that the burden of medical expenses for patients at national university hospitals was lower than at private university hospitals. The lowest 10 hospitals in the coverage rate were all private university hospitals, and the average coverage rate was 55.7%. On the other hand, eight of the top hospitals with an average coverage rate of 70.1% were surveyed as national university hospitals except for two. The average gap between the upper and lower hospitals was 14.4 percent, and the patient burden rate was 1.5 times different.

In particular, it was found that the patient’s medical expense burden was about 2.5 times higher than the Hwasun Chonnam National University Hospital (79.2%), which has the lowest coverage rate at CHA University’s Gangnam CHA Hospital (47.5%).

Gyeongsilryeon said, “Some private university hospitals with a coverage rate of less than 50% seem to need thorough management by the government to ensure that they are properly performing the public interest role of education and medical care.” Insisted that there is an inequality situation caused by the absence of public medical care, so improvement measures must be prepared.” He added, “In order to bridge the medical gap caused by the shortage of public medical services between regions and to successfully promote the policy to strengthen health insurance coverage, public hospitals must be expanded first.”

[김금이 기자]
[ⓒ 매일경제 & mk.co.kr, 무단전재 및 재배포 금지]