South Korea National Health Insurance Service

A single, compulsory national health insurer covering nearly the entire population of South Korea, created on July 1, 2000, when the government merged the country's separate regional and workplace health insurance societies into one unified national insurer, consolidating a system that had previously operated through multiple separate insurance societies. The National Health Insurance Service administers coverage nationwide, financed mainly through income based contributions, and its 2000 creation is widely cited by health policy researchers as the culmination of a multi-decade path South Korea followed toward universal health insurance coverage. The single-payer structure gave the Korean government stronger negotiating leverage over medical fees than the earlier fragmented system had allowed.