Next Year's Health Insurance Rate to Increase 1.89%: An Employee Will Pay on Average 2,475 Won More a Month

[경향신문]

Kang Do-tae, second vice minister of health and welfare speaks at the 19th Health Insurance Policy Deliberation Committee at the Kukje Electronic Center in Seocho-gu, Seoul on August 26. Courtesy of the Ministry of Health and Welfare

Next year, the national health insurance rate will increase 1.89% from this year.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare announced that in the early morning of August 27, the Health Insurance Policy Deliberation Committee, the highest decision-making body on the national health insurance, decided to raise the health insurance rate for 2022 by 1.89%. The rate for people subscribing to an employee health insurance policy will increase from the current 6.86% to 6.99% next year, while for local health insurance subscribers the rate will increase from 201.5 won per contribution score to 205.3 won.

Thus, a worker who subscribes to an employee health insurance policy will pay on average 2,475 won more a month, which based on the contribution charged in June this year would mean the worker would pay 133,087 won instead of 130,612 won. In a year, the worker will pay 29,700 won more. The monthly average health insurance contribution for a household subscribing to a local health insurance policy will increase 1,938 won to 104,713 won from this year’s 102,775 won. The health insurance rate is usually determined by a vote after a discussion by the committee members, but this time, the representatives of insurance subscribers, health care service providers, and public interest reached a unanimous agreement without a vote.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare said, “The committee members reached an agreement after considering the need to smoothly promote measures for health insurance benefits and to continuously and effectively respond to infectious diseases amidst the COVID-19 outbreak.”

Next year’s health insurance rate climbed by a lower rate than the 3% previously planned by the government. The government, which has been promoting “Moon Jae-in Care” with more expansive benefits, announced in its first Comprehensive National Health Insurance Plan that it could raise the health insurance rate by 3.49% in 2020-2022 and by 3.20% in 2023. However, the committee decided to minimize the increase rate, which could put a burden on households and companies this year, due to the aggravated social and economic challenges brought on by COVID-19.

The committee decided to increase the rate 1.89% so the health insurance rate for workers subscribing to the employee health insurance policy would not exceed 7%. In the past, the health insurance rate increased by 0.90% in 2016 and the rate was frozen in 2017. In the last four years, the rate increased somewhere around 2-3%: 2.04% in 2018, 3.49% in 2019, 3.20% in 2020, and 2.89% in 2021.