::A Geek in Korea::

My wife was in for a rude surprise when the document for National Health Insurance arrived for my new job. I am covered by my employer. My daughter is also included under my name. My wife had been removed from our family’s insurance after I got my new job. This made no sense. She got booted when they updated my information for my new employer, but nothing had changed with her that would have caused this sort of problem.

She talked to the National Insurance office. They said that because she was working last year and made enough money on her own to qualify, she should have been on her own, and not under my name. This means that we’d be paying double the insurance rate each month for dual coverage instead of having a family rate. The strange thing was that she quit her job MONTHS ago, long before the baby was delivered. Why did they just get around to kicking her off the plan when I went to update my employment? We had been using the National Health insurance constantly for stuff related to the baby, so they knew she was drawing benefits. Why would they drop her from the plan now?

It turns out that the two elementary schools she worked for needed to provide documents to the Tax office stating she no longer was receiving payment. Once she had those papers, she could fax the Insurance office with that document to get reinstated under my name instead of having to pay for her own coverage. She called one of the schools that was nearby and they promptly faxed the document to the office. We went to the National Insurance office today to see if this was enough to get her put back under my family’s plan.

It turns out that both schools needed to file the paperwork. The National Insurance office worker said that my wife could get in trouble if there was a discrepancy between the school said and the tax office, so she had to get this paper to prove she had stopped working there.

She called the other school across town. They said they would be unable to provide the document without first being paid a fee. They don’t release their documents without a fee of 300 won (Less than 30 cents American). They wouldn’t fax the paper on my wife’s behalf out of pocket and demanded she paid the fee in person. This school is nearly an hour away by public transportation and they wanted her to go there herself and hand over 300 won. The bus trip to get there cost three times that amount one way! Still, she had to go to get this issue settled.

My wife made the trip today while I was home to watch the baby. She then had to spend an extra 200 won to cover the “Fax fee” too. She had to pay a total of 500 won for National Health insurance, and that required two hours of her time! Mind-numbingly stupid paperwork requirements aside, she did get added back to my name legally, and now we don’t have to worry about it anymore. I’m just happy we are all covered by insurance and don’t need to worry about it disappearing any time soon.