Planning for a 10-year long-term care plan began under the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration, but President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration is now calling it one of its “political achievements.” So what has Ma done? Whatever it is, it clearly does not pass any sort of litmus test.
A few days ago, media reports said a daughter-in-law was suspected of beating her mother-in-law to death after losing control of her emotions. The reports said the mother-in-law had had a stroke and had been placed in a nursing home, but because of the family’s meager income, she had to go back home where her daughter-in-law looked after her. If the Ma government has achieved anything, why do tragedies like this keep happening?
While the Ma administration’s recent long-term care policies may have won it some praise, these policies ignore the needs of ordinary people. The Cabinet is not interested in talking about establishing affordable long-term care services; instead, it is encouraging people to purchase private long-term care insurance while allowing life insurance companies to run long-term care services, so they can sell long-term care insurance and operate long-term care services. However, the average family cannot afford such insurance and services.
The Ministry of the Interior recently proposed a reverse mortgage policy that would provide financial assistance to elderly people not eligible for pensions. However, this would only benefit those who own a house. The Council of Labor Affairs also proposed a trial scheme of hiring foreign nurses on an hourly basis, but this would merely provide those who can already afford a foreign nurse with an extra option. The government’s long-term care policies only serve large corporations and those with a lot of cash or who own property. In addition, the government is planning to increase labor insurance premiums and cutting labor pension payments.
Academics and experts warned long ago that Taiwanese society is aging. With the number of disabled or incapacitated people increasing, the pressure of having to take care of them will lead to more family disputes and broken homes, they said. Women, who are traditionally expected to take charge of family care and who normally have less money than men, will bear the brunt of these policies. The privatization of long-term care, coupled with shrinking guarantees for labor pensions, will cause a string of tragedies to sweep Taiwanese society.
If the government keeps stubbornly doing what it wants instead of what the public needs, government officials may be shocked to discover a future in which most Taiwanese cannot afford private health insurance, the care services sold by profit-making companies or caregivers from Southeast Asian countries. The government wants to strengthen family relations, but no essay competition in the world will be able to change the fact that such relations have long been destroyed by the pressures of providing long-term care.
Sixteen years ago, academics and experts underlined the need for the government to introduce universal and affordable public care services. Only when the provision of care services is no longer a private concern and becomes a matter of government concern or an important part of the national infrastructure will there be room to reduce the stress put on families to provide care.
Unfortunately, the Ma administration seems uninterested in this matter, and one can only wonder if the public has to wait another 16 years before something happens.
Chyn Yu-rung is director of policy at the Awakening Foundation.
Translated by Drew Cameron
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers