At a press conference yesterday, Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) caucus whip Chen Chien-ming (
"Although Taiwan's insurance is nominally referred to as National Health Insurance, due to financial difficulties, prison inmates are excluded from coverage. In addition to being deprived of the ability to freely seek medical treatment, inmates are faced with the burden of heavy medical bills," Chen said.
Chen said that illegal Chinese immigrants either convicted of crimes or awaiting deportation in accommodation centers are given free medical attention for human rights reasons.
According to Chen, each year the government spends an average of NT$1,700 (US$52) per Taiwanese inmate on medical treatment. Meanwhile, an illegal Chinese immigrant incurs an average of NT$4,333 in expenses per year.
According to Article 11 of the National Health Insurance Law (
Chen said that due to the prisoners' lack of health insurance and the unlikelihood of doctors' receiving compensation for treating them, most doctors decline to treat convicts. Currently, only two full-time prison doctors treat the roughly 50,000 inmates serving time in the nation's 48 prisons and detention centers.
While prison inmates can apply to receive medical attention outside prison facilities, they must pay the medical bills on their own. Department of Health (DOH) officials said yesterday that legal changes to bring inmates into the national health insurance system are unlikely.
"Most nations do not include prisoners in national health insurance ... Including inmates in the health insurance program does not necessarily mean that inmate healthcare will improve. It does not matter whether the money for inmates' medical needs comes from insurance or from government allocations," Wang Yi-ren (
"We are focusing on the improvement of prison hospitals instead ... Pei Teh Hospital (培德醫院) was recently established to service the Taichung Prison and a cooperation agreement has been signed with the China Medical College Hospital. In addition, we hope to reinforce cooperation between prisons and DOH hospitals throughout Taiwan," Wang said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift