Hospital representatives yesterday threatened to end their contract with the Bureau of National Health Insurance (BNHI) to protest the movable rate used to calculate the compensation hospitals receive for their services.
"The way the system works, hospitals have to pay their expenses first, and then later, depending on the total amount of medical expenses incurred, a rate for which hospitals are compensated is decided," said Victor Chang (
"It's as if you pay NT$1,000 ahead of time only to find out later that you will only be compensated NT$900," he said.
The amount of compensation is determined using a system under which hospitals are accorded a certain number of points for medical expenses incurred.
According to the association, the rate of compensation that the BNHI recently announced to cover the first three months of last year averaged NT$0.8847 per point for emergency services and NT$0.9872 for in-patient services.
Doctors representing such institutions as Cathay General Hospital, Cheng Hsin Rehabilitation Medical Center, Taipei City Municipal Wan Fang Hospital and Tzu Chi Hospital, among others, announced plans to pull out of the health insurance system.
Hsieh Wen-hui (
The protesters also aired their grievances yesterday afternoon at the campaign headquarters of the presidential and vice presidential candidates.
"Nowhere in the world is a movable rate used with no limitations to its fluctuations. When the compensation rate drops below a certain point, there needs to be government subsidies for medical expenses," Chang said.
"In addition, as the demand for medical treatment grows, either the total amount budgeted for medical expenses must increase or people have to adjust the frequency with which they visit hospitals," he said.
Hsieh said the movable-rate system hits district hospitals hardest, with 59 percent of these hospitals losing money.
In response, the bureau's Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Liu Chien-hsiang (劉見詳) said the compensation rate was rising.
He cited figures to show that while the reimbursement rate for the first three quarters of last year had averaged NT$0.98 per point and it had been NT$0.96 per point for the same time period in 2002.
"In addition, the total amount budgeted for the national health insurance at hospitals has continued to increase. Last year, it rose 4.5 percent," Liu said.
He added that if hospitals decided to pull out of their contracts with the bureau, patients would have to pay for medical services on their own.
Hsieh suggested that the bureau work out an arrangement that would allow it to directly reimburse patients for their medical expenses, instead of hospitals.
Liu said such a plan would be impossible to implement.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,