South Korea Has the Best Healthcare in the World

National Health Insurance won't cover a lot of serious illness and operations. Which is why, anyone long term here should have private health insurance to supplement it.

It's (NHI) great for subsidized visits to local clinics and getting medicine but anything worse, then it doesn't stretch as far.

You are paying for it one way or another. Let's say you pay 100k a month for supplemental insurance. That's a whole lot of money over 5-10 years, let alone 20 or more. You could pay for a lot of surgeries and stuff from that.
And I'm not even sure if one could find an insurance that really covers 100% of everything for 100k/month. There is a lot of fine print and exceptions like certain types of cancer, dental treatments etc. If you really want to be covered all around, that is going to cost you quite a bit. Especially if you want your entire family to be covered. Think 4-500k/month.

rather than the cost, what concerns me about Korean healthcare (or healthcare for people living out in the countryside in many countries for that matter) is that often times for emergencies there are not experienced medical personnel to handle the seriousness of the situation. The recent nurse in seoul that died after collapsing at work because she needed a neurosurgeon and both neurosurgeons were off duty so she was sent to another hospital but it was too late........most of the provinces wont have more than a handful of neurosurgeons in the whole province. the over prescribing of medicines....even applies to veterinarians .........if we speak about ems personnel ...in Korea for the most part ems personnel do not perform much more than cpr and when every second counts or even moreso in say seoul where you have to deal with traffic....that ems personnel arent trained...or better are just not performing other lifesaving measures because fear of making a mistake or whatever......and this is not the healthcare system but cars not getting out of the way for medical vehicles is just ridiculous

You are paying for it one way or another. Let's say you pay 100k a month for supplemental insurance. That's a whole lot of money over 5-10 years, let alone 20 or more. You could pay for a lot of surgeries and stuff from that.
And I'm not even sure if one could find an insurance that really covers 100% of everything for 100k/month. There is a lot of fine print and exceptions like certain types of cancer, dental treatments etc. If you really want to be covered all around, that is going to cost you quite a bit. Especially if you want your entire family to be covered. Think 4-500k/month.

I’ve been paying 30,000 a month for years now. Covers for medical and housing.  Covered us when I needed an MRI and also to replace busted pipes and compensate other tenants in our apartment building.

rather than the cost, what concerns me about Korean healthcare (or healthcare for people living out in the countryside in many countries for that matter) is that often times for emergencies there are not experienced medical personnel to handle the seriousness of the situation. The recent nurse in seoul that died after collapsing at work because she needed a neurosurgeon and both neurosurgeons were off duty so she was sent to another hospital but it was too late........most of the provinces wont have more than a handful of neurosurgeons in the whole province. the over prescribing of medicines....even applies to veterinarians .........if we speak about ems personnel ...in Korea for the most part ems personnel do not perform much more than cpr and when every second counts or even moreso in say seoul where you have to deal with traffic....that ems personnel arent trained...or better are just not performing other lifesaving measures because fear of making a mistake or whatever......and this is not the healthcare system but cars not getting out of the way for medical vehicles is just ridiculous

Yep, and it is going to get worse. Nobody wants to live in the country
and nobody wants to study gynaecology, paediatrics or cardiac
surgery. They want lucrative specialities like plastic surgery. This is
so obviously a situation where laws need to be made, guidelines
enforced in medical schools and incentives given to new doctors.

In Canada doctors and nurses had large portions of their tuition paid
off if they worked up north for a few years after they graduated. I'm
not sure how effective this was but my dentist met his wife, a nurse,
in the Yukon or something.

Yep, and it is going to get worse. Nobody wants to live in the country
and nobody wants to study gynaecology, paediatrics or cardiac
surgery. They want lucrative specialities like plastic surgery. This is
so obviously a situation where laws need to be made, guidelines
enforced in medical schools and incentives given to new doctors.

In Canada doctors and nurses had large portions of their tuition paid
off if they worked up north for a few years after they graduated. I'm
not sure how effective this was but my dentist met his wife, a nurse,
in the Yukon or something.

yeah and then the high paying ones have the most room for error so they are scared of that.......i dunno what happened with the debate on whether to put cameras in operating rooms or not but it didn't help .......i say doctors should be responsible for grave errors if it is something they caused due to negligence but not in all situations because after all they arent high risk surgeries for nothing.....i agree that cameras could help catch the gross negligence - the case where the doctor dropped a newborn and he/she died but it was never reported etc

I’ve been paying 30,000 a month for years now. Covers for medical and housing.  Covered us when I needed an MRI and also to replace busted pipes and compensate other tenants in our apartment building.

Could you share what insurance is that exactly?

We had 실비 through the Post Office which was the cheapest we could find. And trust me, my wife did her homework to find the best deal.
실비 is the most common, basic, supplemental insurance type that most Koreans have. And many have something else on top of that (and the national health insurance.) A host of companies offer this insurance with slight differences. Anyways, it doesn't cover 100% just 80 or 90%? of what's left after the NHIS covered their part. And even that one doesn't apply for every hospital bill that one could have. There are exceptions.
When we started it was around 40.000 for a family of three. It kept going up every year. In four years it went to 100.000. That is when we decided to cancel it.

rather than the cost, what concerns me about Korean healthcare (or healthcare for people living out in the countryside in many countries for that matter) is that often times for emergencies there are not experienced medical personnel to handle the seriousness of the situation. The recent nurse in seoul that died after collapsing at work because she needed a neurosurgeon and both neurosurgeons were off duty so she was sent to another hospital but it was too late........most of the provinces wont have more than a handful of neurosurgeons in the whole province. the over prescribing of medicines....even applies to veterinarians .........if we speak about ems personnel ...in Korea for the most part ems personnel do not perform much more than cpr and when every second counts or even moreso in say seoul where you have to deal with traffic....that ems personnel arent trained...or better are just not performing other lifesaving measures because fear of making a mistake or whatever......and this is not the healthcare system but cars not getting out of the way for medical vehicles is just ridiculous

Parts of rural America also suffer from a lack of and substandard healthcare. Large conglomerates have been buying up small hospitals, merging them and shutting down the less profitable ones.

Could you share what insurance is that exactly?

I have insurance through Meritz Fire: 무배당 메리츠 가족단위보험 M-Story1204. I am the only insured person on it, not my wife.

It's probably not the most comprehensive cover out there as we mainly got it in case I got into a bike accident and were hospitalized (NHI won't cover crap).

I do think my wife and I should take out more comprehensive Life Insurance so we'll need to look into that.

I have insurance through Meritz Fire: 무배당 메리츠 가족단위보험 M-Story1204. I am the only insured person on it, not my wife.

It's probably not the most comprehensive cover out there as we mainly got it in case I got into a bike accident and were hospitalized (NHI won't cover crap).

I do think my wife and I should take out more comprehensive Life Insurance so we'll need to look into that.

Thanks!
Yeah, that also appears to be a 실비 type insurance. My portion was actually around that when we axed it. For some reason, monthly premiums for women are significantly higher.

When we started it was cheap. Even though it doesn't nearly give full coverage, at 40k/month it seemed reasonable. However, it kept going up like 30% or so each year. It was 60 something last year and then it went to near 100. At that rate, it could've been 150k or 200k very soon. That's a lot of money over years. Unless we face something very serious or extremely rare condition, we will not likely to benefit from it.

Unless we face something very serious or extremely rare condition, we will not likely to benefit from it.

I hope nothing like that happens to you, but no one buys insurance with the thought this will likely happen. You don't buy fire insurance because you expect your house to burn down unless you're planning on committing arson.

I mean, only in that scenario we would get more out of it than what we paid into. And as such, it makes more financial sense if we don't pay into it at all.
That's just my opinion. Admittedly though, I'm not a big fan of insurances.