VII. Health 1. The Publicity of the Healthcare System Weaken (242-249) 71. The Government asserts that it will retain the current medical care system which is cantered around the NHI system. However, the policy orientation toward increasing the profitability thorough medical industrialization, without specific measures to reinforce the public interests of the health care system would likely aggravate the existing gap in the use of medical service and undermine utility of the NHI system. 72. In the healthcare system of Korea, the publicity and accessibility the medical care service have been successfully secured by operating the universal NHI system and allowing non-profit private organizations to provide medical service. Nevertheless, because private hospitals account for 90% of all hospitals, the public expenditure for medical care is low as indicated in the fact that the NHI fund covers a mere 64.6% of the total medical expenses spent by the public, and even the medical benefit recipients of classes 1 and 2 are required to pay 5-13% of the medical costs incurred, the people with serious illness, as well as the marginalized and disadvantaged, are burdened with high medical costs, which leads to inequality in the use of medical service. Accordingly, in order to guarantee people's right to health, the Government should formulate and implement policy measures to maintain the non-profit nature of medical service providers and to increase the Government's accountability for the health care finance system. 73. The Government is rather speeding up its activities to facilitate industrialization of the medical service sector which was first initiated in 2008. Although the Government insists that for-profit hospitals will be permitted only in Jeju Special Self-governing Province and special economic zones, it is feared that the permission will be spread over to other regional areas or, at least, their existence will have a substantial impact on the medical care system of other areas. In particular, given that the Government is working to introduce some institutional arrangements to promote profit-seeking activities by non-profit hospitals and stimulate private health insurance business, it is not unlikely that medical service will funnel into some wealthier patients, the general medical costs will go up, the NHI system will be weakened and the disadvantaged groups including persons with disabilities or a history of illness will be discriminated against. 22