제 24 호 Conflicts Over Medical Reform Plan: Government vs. Medical Community
Kicker: Debate
Conflicts Over Medical Reform Plan:
Government vs. Medical Community
by Si-ho Park, Editor
Recently, the government has come up with medical reform proposals, including the expansion of the number of medical school admissions, and the government and the medical community continue to confront this. In particular, doctors' strikes appear closely in our lives and are causing great issues at home and abroad. It has been a big controversy recently, but few people know more about it. Let's find out the details together.
South Korea Healthcare Reform Plan
The government argues that it is necessary to prepare packaged solutions to expand the number of doctors and strengthen essential medical care in order to implement essential medical innovation strategies that save lives and regions.It intends to promote medical reform based on four pillars: expanding medical personnel, strengthening local medical care, a medical accident safety net, and fair compensation.
The government announced a plan to increase the number of medical school admissions by 2,000 over five years starting in 2025 to select a total of 5,058 students per year. The government's "essential medical policy package" contained four major medical reforms, including strengthening local medical care, establishing a safety net for medical accidents, and enhancing fairness in the compensation system, as well as expanding medical personnel.
Doctors are strongly protesting against the government's policy. The government and doctors are fiercely confronting each other over the medical reform plan, which includes expanding the number of admissions to medical schools.
The Faucet Metaphor about Medical Imbalances
Many people may be watching the situation with their own thoughts on the government’s medical packages, including the addition of 2,000 medical students.
One medical school student shared his opinion on this situation. The government has taken issue with the lack of “total quantity” of doctors, but he says that it is a matter of “distribution” or “structure,” rather than “total quantity,” that the medical personnel are concentrated in non-essential medical departments such as plastic surgery and dermatology rather than essential medical departments such as emergency medical departments, thoracic surgery, and obstetrics and gynecology, depending on the difficulty of generating profits due to low medical fees and working conditions. This will also include situations in which doctors are not greatly protected from the risk of litigation in emergency medical departments and when providing other essential medical care.
The medical community uses a faucet metaphor to explain the current situation. Imagine a faucet with two holes, one of which is blocked so that water can flow out less on one side and more on the other. In that case, what can we do to make sure that the holes with less water flow out smoothly? In that case, they say that pouring more water into the holes where water comes out cannot be a fundamental solution. The solution is to fix the blocked hole or change the tap. In this metaphor, the broken faucet means the current medical structure, the blocked one is doctors going to essential medical departments, the unblocked one with a lot of water is doctors going to non-essential medical departments, and the solution of pouring more water means the government's current augmentation plan. The medical community argues that we need to change and fix the broken faucet, which means the medical structure, and that is the fundamental and effective solution.
However, on the other hand, some other people say that it is also necessary to increase the “total amount” to solve the medical gap caused by the increase in the quantity and quality of medical care, and improving the cost of essential medical care is a problem to look at together. It is also suggested that reducing excessive demand and increasing the number of doctors should go hand in hand, but reducing excessive demand alone cannot solve the medical problem.
Medical school capacity expansion is the opening of a tap called “the supply of doctors” that has been locked for 30 years. Of course, the work of giving way to this increased number of doctors to flow to essential and local medical care must be done at the same time. Adjustments to manage excessive medical use in Korean society are also essential to ensure that excessive water bills are not paid. It is a more difficult goal to achieve over the long term than increasing and decreasing the number of medical schools. However, the next stage of work cannot be done without turning on the tap “number of doctors.”
Other Issues Concerning the Medical Package
Another reason for the opposition from the medical community is that there is no exact basis for increasing the number of students per year by 2,000 at once. Currently, the quota for admission to 40 medical schools nationwide is a total of 3,058, which has been frozen for 19 years since 2006. In the previous government, there were several attempts to expand the number of admissions for medical schools, but they failed due to opposition from doctors.
The government said, "Considering the duration of medical school education (six years) and residency training (four to five years), the effect of increasing medical schools in 2025 will be as early as 2031, or as late as 2036. For this reason, if the number is increased to less than 2,000 annually, the period of medical leave will be prolonged."
Many in the medical community believe that increasing the number of doctors is necessary. However, it is pointed out that increasing the number of doctors equivalent to 65 percent of the current admissions at once is systemically burdensome, and could result in decline in the quality of medical school education.
The current Korean government's medical reform plan, which includes increasing the number of medical students, is causing a lot of conflict and controversy. I hope reading this article has been an opportunity for you to think deeply about this issue and organize your position based on the various opinions of the government and the medical community introduced in the article.
Sources:
https://www.mohw.go.kr/menu.es?mid=a10715020000
https://www.bbc.com/korean/articles/cjrkkpkdl8ko
