hankyoreh

By Choi Sung-jin, staff reporter

With Korean national health insurance coverage for people 65 years and older in the first half of the year costing around 10 trillion won (US$9.80 billion), South Korean society is having to shoulder an increasingly heavy burden from the rise of the elderly population, government figures show.

According to documentation released by the National Health Insurance Service on Sept. 3 containing important statistics for health insurance in the first half of 2014, the cost of treatment for the elderly in the first half of the year amounted to 9.67 trillion won, or 36.6% of the total cost of treatment. This means that people 65 years of age and older accounted for more than one third of the cost of treating various diseases and conditions that are covered by national health insurance between January and June of this year (26.41 trillion won altogether, including individual contributions). Currently, 5.87 million elderly people are enrolled in the national health insurance program (including dependents), representing 11.7% of all total enrollees.

The average monthly cost of treating one elderly person was 276,824 won (US$271.32), 4.4 times the 63,045 won (US$61.79) spent on people younger than 65.

People over 65 years old also tended to visit doctors more often. While people younger than 65 saw a doctor around once a month (1.28), the elderly went an average of four times a month (4.32), 3.4 times more.

Medical bills paid by the national insurance plan in connection with Alzheimer‘s disease and Parkinson’s disease continued to climb as well. The medical cost of Alzheimer’s in 2013 was 1.74 trillion won, a huge jump from 2008 (382.8 billion won). Last year was the first year that treatment for Alzheimer’s exceeded 1 trillion won.

The cost of treating Parkinson’s disease and cerebrovascular diseases was also up from 2018, from 122.4 billion won to 288.1 billion won and from 1.287 trillion won to 1.872 trillion won, respectively.

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