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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Ju Hwan Oh, MD, MPH, School of Public Health, Seoul National University, 28, Yongon-dong, chongno-gu, Seoul, 110-799, South Korea, +82-2-3668-7872, oh328@snu.ac.kr

We fought to keep public provincial hospitals against privatization and won finally. Korean government decided to privatize the Kangreung provincial hospital and to semi-privatize 8 other similar hospital during the course of neoliberal reform in 2001. Korean Federation of Hospital Union and People's Health Coalition for Equal Society (Social activist group) planned to fight against the privatization drive together. We gathered three pre-semiprivatized-ex-public hospitals performance data at first to prepare the struggle. And we analyzed and compared them to other public provincial hospital's data. Analyzed data showed us that there was no distinct improvement of performance except just increased profit of semi-privatized hospitals. Furthermore their increased profitability was not based on improved qualities of services but on lowered hospital worker's real wage, destablization of hospital worker's job status and mostly increased direct payments from patients even for the same services. Especially average in-patient fee per day had increased a lot abruptly after semi-privatization. Even the poor had to pay more for same treatment than before as well. The large increase in profitability meant inappropriate extraction from patients' pockets and social insurance fund and it meant also exploitation of hospital workers. We announced the truth via a local television news interview. But none of the people in charge of these hospitals could justify these results. Furthermore we held frequent demonstrations in front of local government building. Finally government discarded the plans of privatization. So we protected the public provincial hospitals from the neoliberal attack.

Learning Objectives: