Chronic disease patients are so burdened with the financial burden of their families that they desperately need to take countermeasures
Feb 10, 2025
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According to the Korea Pediatric Youth Hospital Association "Person with chronic pediatric diseases mainly means children with congenital or long-term medical conditions"The government is currently implementing a special calculation system with adult patients with chronic diseases for children with chronic diseases." Unlike adults, these children are mostly cared for by young parents. Their economic hardships are so heavy that they cannot be compared to those of adults.
According to the association, the out-of-pocket expense is reduced when the special calculation is applied, but if the upper limit is high, the economic burden is still high, and the person must pay the full amount of special treatment, some new drugs, and expensive equipment"In particular, many children with chronic diseases are newborns and infants, and additional costs, including nursing expenses, are incurred when hospitalized, which significantly affects the family economy, resulting in the collapse of the family."
Children with chronic diseases are burdened with psychological burdens due to long-term treatment and uncertain prognosis, and families caring for patients are prone to emotional and physical exhaustion, and long-term treatment can limit social activities, as well as depression or loneliness, so special attention and countermeasures for them are absolutely essential," he stressed.
The association introduced that "people with chronic pediatric diseases subject to special calculation cases include leukemia, brain tumors, lymphoma, congenital heart disease, heart failure, chronic renal failure, nephrotic syndrome, cirrhosis, chronic hepatitis, chronic lung disease, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, growth hormone deficiency, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, phenylketonuria, galactosemia, diseases included in the designated rare disease list, etc." The provision of additional subsidies according to income level and improvement of patient refusal to subscribe to insurance for special cases for calculating indemnity medical insurance should be prepared", he suggested.
Choi Yong-jae, president of the Korea Children and Youth Hospital Association, said, `For example, a premature baby of 24 weeks of pregnancy is administering T4 due to severe bronchial lung formation, and in this case, a disease that can usually end up with a mild cold is at high risk of progressing to severe pneumonia, and inpatient treatment is often required, and the cost of treatment exceeds 1 million won per hospitalization, which is extremely vulnerable to infection and must be used as a single room.'
In addition, Chairman Choi Yong-jae said, "The policy authorities and policymakers must be aware of the high burden of treatment costs for children and adolescents with chronic diseases who are in such a difficult environment due to the fact that they cannot subscribe to general insurance such as actual insurance due to chronic diseases." he stressed.
Chairman Choi suggested that "at the government level, measures such as expanding quarantine room policies or preparing separate medical expenses support policies are needed to prepare a system to reduce the burden of treatment costs for children and adolescents with chronic diseases and to apply single room cost reduction to ELBW patients and patients with severe chronic diseases who are inevitable to use single rooms."
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This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
