The national health insurances in Korea and Taiwan have maintained the dependent system that includes the insureds and their families. These two cases explicitly exemplify the familialism in East Asian welfare regime. However, comparing the two systems in detail, we can easily note the variation in their familialisation effects despite similar family realities in the two societies. To explain why Korea and Taiwan adopted the NHI of different institutional arrangements, this article focuses on the historical combination of the state's political and fiscal concerns and families' rational choice, which led to the variation in family policy.

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