The Consumers’ Foundation yesterday said a decision by the Department of Health to initiate the second-generation National Health Insurance (NHI) program at the current premium rate of 5.17 percent rather than at 4.91 percent, as announced in May, was a breach of faith and would steal from the poor to benefit the rich.
The second-generation NHI program is scheduled to be implemented in January, with a supplementary premium of 2 percent, the foundation said, adding that Department of Health Minister Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達) had said in April that the current premium rate should be adjusted to 4.91 percent.
The department is breaking its promise and is disguising the fact that the premuim will be increased, the foundation said.
“According to statistics, NHI expenditure on households with the lowest 20 percent of income grew by only 4 percent between 2000 and 2009, but expenditure on households with the highest 20 percent of income grew by 40 percent in the same period,” Consumers’ Foundation board member Hsieh Tien-jen (謝天仁) said.
“Rich people are using more medical resources than poor people, but paying the same premium rate,” he said. “This is against the spirit of the second-generation NHI program and the department should be held responsible.”
In addition, while GDP this year is expected to be below 2 percent, the growth rate of the NHI program this year is 4.3 percent and the growth rate of the total expenditure cap is set at 6 percent, he said, adding that he wondered how the medical industry can be booming while other industries suffer.
Moreover, the department has allocated a NT$4.5 billion (US$152 million) budget to improve the quality of nursing in medical facilities, but cases of nurses being overworked remain in the news, Hsieh said, adding that the foundation urges the department to re-evaluate the funding for the NHI program and to examine whether the money is being put to proper use.
The foundation said it feared an increased NHI program would result in wasteful spending on medical resources, while consumers would have to pay a higher premium than at present, which is a heavy burden for the poorer people in society.
He urged the department to keep its promise and lower the premium to 4.91 percent, as well as re-evaluate expenditure to ensure it is being used effectively.
In related developments, a proposed policy to levy a 2 percent supplementary premium on interest-derived income above a threshold of NT$2,000 on a single account has seen people searching for a legal loophole by splitting their savings accounts.
In addition to interest-derived income, the new system would also tax supplementary premiums — which will be calculated on a single-transaction basis on the principle of “withholding the premium at source” — on income earned from other sources, such as bonuses, stock dividends and rental income.
The maximum amount for each transaction is set at NT$10 million.
The 2 percent premium will be applied to both cash dividends and stock dividends, which are calculated at NT$10 per share, should the combined value of a person’s annual dividends exceed the statutory threshold.
However, if the amount of cash dividends obtained by a stockholder falls short of covering the said person’s payable premium, the Bureau of National Health Insurance would issue a payment demand to that person or take the amount from their next monthly premium.
At present, the average interest rate on a savings account is 1.38 percent, which means that an account holder would pay a NT$40 supplementary premium if the savings in that account amount to NT$145,000.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS