Linking State Intervention and Health Equity Differently: The Universalization of Health Care in South Korea and Taiwan

This study sets out to compare the process of the universalization of health insurance in South Korea and Taiwan, with a particular focus on the similarities of the commercial elements, such as the dominance of a private provider and user fees. What were both the constraints on, and the challenges to government policies to establish universal health insurance with commercial elements? Are there differences between the cases of these two countries? If there are, what caused those differences? What role have the state, market and civil society institutions played in shaping the health systems of these countries? To answer these questions, this paper analyzes the roles of historical institutional legacies, competitive election, active civil society, the education of doctors and nurses, the allocation of medical human resources in the labor market, the medical device industry, public and private hospitals and inter-sectoral policy measures, with a focus on the linkages within and between the health system and other sectors. It is fair to argue that the different modes of government interventions in various sectors and their varying degrees, in terms of enforcement, resulted in the universal health systems of the two countries being qualitatively different, and resulted in different consequences as regards health equity.