Conclusion

Abstract

At a time when calls for austerity are pressuring health care systems in many countries around the world and the ideal of welfare provisioning based on citizenship appears increasingly unaffordable, the Asian countries studied in this book launched milestone reforms that increased their governments’ commitments to universally accessible and redistributive health insurance. Inspired by ideals of health care as a right of citizenship, the reforms pursued in Korea and Thailand notably improved solidarity and equity of their health insurance systems. While critics denigrated the reforms as populist measures that saddled the state with bloated spending obligations—“30 Baht health care is an unsustainable form of socialism” blared a headline in The Nation, a leading Thai newspaper—supporters embraced them as long-overdue measures that redressed inadequate health care protection. Whether the reforms prove to be feckless experiments or ultimately are recognized as historic steps in the building of a more universal welfare state, they indisputably represented departures from the countries’ past policies and firmly established redistributive issues at the heart of political discourse and competition.