Governance of Mandatory Health Insurance and Access to Healthcare: A Comparative Analysis of Morocco and South Korea

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-680-7_12How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Mandatory health insurance; Access to healthcare; Governance

Abstract

The Objective: To comparatively assess how governance choices within the Mandatory Health Insurance (MHI) systems in Morocco and South Korea shape effective access to healthcare, through the analysis of three key di-mensions, namely: institutional architecture, financial structure, and the organiza-tion of healthcare provision.

Methods: Comparative review using an IMRAD structure (Introduction, methodology, results, analysis and discussion) based on legislative sources, na-tional institutional reports (National Agency for Health Insurance — ANAM, National Fund of Social Welfare Organizations — CNOPS, National Social Se-curity Fund — CNSS, Ministry of Health and Social Protection, National Health Insurance Service in South Korea — NHIS; Health Insurance Review and As-sessment Service in South Korea — HIRA), international databases (Organisa-tion for Economic Co-operation and Development — OECD, World Health Or-ganization — WHO, World Bank) and academic publications.

Key indicators include the share of out-of-pocket payments (OOP), popula-tion coverage, healthcare utilization, and ongoing reforms.

Results: South Korea combines a single insurer — the National Health Insur-ance Service (NHIS) — and the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Ser-vice (HIRA) to regulate a predominantly private healthcare provision. Despite high healthcare utilization rates, Out-of-Pocket (OOP) spending remains high.

Morocco has rapidly expanded coverage through AMO-Tadamon, but effec-tive access is still hindered by tariff structures that may require updating and high OOP, in a context of growing private provision and territorial inequalities.

Conclusion: Both trajectories converge toward Universal Health Coverage (UHC) but through distinct governance-financing-service delivery combinations. We propose cross-recommendations: tariff updating and strategic purchasing in Morocco; strengthening primary care and financial protection in South Korea.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Star-Allah Maria
AU  - Cherkaoui Mounia
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/20
TI  - Governance of Mandatory Health Insurance and Access to Healthcare: A Comparative Analysis of Morocco and South Korea
BT  - Proceedings of the Conference Morocco-Korea Cooperation: A Lever for Afro-Asian Development (MKC 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 167
EP  - 177
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-680-7_12
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-680-7_12
ID  - Maria2026
ER  -