Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was urged by two Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers yesterday to expedite a budget to pay accumulated health insurance subsidy debts.
"It is worrisome that Mayor Ma is not prepared to budget for a fund to pay his city's outstanding contributions to the labor insurance and the national health insurance program," DPP Legislator Lai Ching-te (賴清德) said.
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Lai and his colleague Lan Mei-chin (
Adding up an overdue NT$11.7 billion for the labor insurance subsidy, the outstanding NT$19.7 billion that Taipei city government had owed the country for the previous two years together with the latest increase of NT$15.9 billion this year, contributed to the total arrears of over NT$27 billion, Lai said.
"But Mayor Ma preferred to petition for a constitutional interpretation about his government's jurisdiction to pay the bills, or file for an administrative appeal on the controversy after the Council of Grand Justices ruled that the city government should pay the subsidy. However, he never thought about budgeting for a fund to pay the bills," Lai said.
Ma challenged an article of the National Health Insurance Law (全民健保法) stating that local governments are obliged to pay one-third of the costs of medical treatment incurred in the previous year by the residents under their jurisdiction, saying the Bureau of National Health Insurance was in breach of Article 109 of the ROC Constitution when it urged him to pay a health insurance subsidy debt of NT$8.3 billion in January.
The other local government singled out by the insurance bureau was Kaohsiung city, whose mayor promised that he would budget the money to pay off the enormous debt gradually, after grand justices told him to do so.
Mayor Ma, on the other hand, decided to file an administrative appeal about his government's financial independence and therefore Taipei's debt issue remains unsolved.
Lan, elected from Taipei city, urged Ma to redeem the debts, in the light of the city's two million residents enjoying an abundant budget of NT$160 billion this year, which is double the amount given to their three million neighbors living in Taipei County.
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