Among foreign health insurance dependents, Chinese nationals spent the largest amount of healthcare funds of Korea’s universal health care program in 2022. The amount of healthcare funds spent for Chinese national dependents totaled 1.95 million won (US$1,467) for each one of them, and the contributions have steadily increased over the past five years.
According to the National Health Insurance Service’s health insurance data on foreigners, the number of health insurance dependents by nationality at the end of last year was 189,947, of which 110,753 (58.3 percent) were Chinese nationals.
Korea had 568,506 health insurance members who were Chinese nationals who had 117,753 dependents. One in five was a dependent.
The next highest number of foreign dependents was Vietnamese (7,514), an 11-fold difference from Chinese nationals. The United States (6,967) and Uzbekistan and Russia (5,014 each) followed with wide gaps with China.
In 2022, foreigners’ total medical expenses in Korea amounted to 1.5944 trillion won, about 1.5 times higher than 998 billion won in 2018. During the same period, National Health Insurance Service’s contributions climbed from 748.8 billion won to 1.1838 trillion won.
Of this amount, domestic medical expenses spent for Chinese nationals amounted to 1.1192 trillion, of which the National Health Insurance Service’s conion won.
The National Health Insurance Service’s contributions for foreign dependents totaled 303.1 billion won. Those for Chinese nationals were 215.9 billion won, accounting for 71.2 percent of the total. The average amount of healthcare insurance money per Chinese dependent was 1.95 million won, which was 850,000 won (77.3 percent) more than 1.1 million, the average for foreign dependents of other nationalities.
Last year’s national health insurance’s balance showed a surplus of 556 billion won when comparing premiums paid by foreigners and contributions from the National Health Insurance Service but a deficit of 229 billion won when it came to Chinese nationals alone.