A market-based, for-profit medical service introduced by health officials to curb costs in the ailing National Health Insurance (NHI) system has eroded public trust in doctors, according to physicians who attended a seminar yesterday.
The Public Rights Promotion Association convened the seminar to invite health experts to take the pulse of the over-commercialized health industry and find ways to rebuild trust between patients and doctors.
Disputes between doctors and patients often stem from the commercialization of medical service, physicians said.
"Relations between doctors and patients are no longer unmediated," said Lee Yuan-fang (
The problem, Lee said, is that some patients make unnecessary visits to hospitals just to make sure their health premium is well spent -- and doctors cannot turn these patients away, no matter how frivolous their health concerns.
"Doctors can't simply turn their back on them. [That would] violate the spirit of the medical profession," said Shih Chun-ming (
"Moreover, before the government placed a cap on each hospital's spending, the more patients you saw, the more money you earned," Shih said. "The NHI taught both patients and doctors to reap profits or gain advantages in the medical business."
As a result, many doctors inevitably become overworked. Shih, 41, has to see more than 60 patients in a single morning. Lee, a veteran orthopedist, has at least 200 people waiting for hours every day just for a brief diagnosis.
Official figures from the Bureau of National Health Insurance show that every person in Taiwan pays an average of 15.4 visits to hospitals each year.
Given the abuse of medical resources, it is hardly surprising that miscommunication often occurs between doctors and patients.
"When you have another 100 patients to see, you simply have no time to explain the treatment, the drug's effects or the therapy's risks to every patient," Shih said. "That could very often lead to misunderstandings between doctors and patients."
Shih recalled how he has received complaints when he did not give a brain scan to a patient with a mild bruise on his head, or when he prescribed anti-fever tablets rather than giving shots.
"As the practice of medicine becomes a commercial transaction, trust evaporates and bargaining sets in," said Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Hong Chi-chang (
Hong said that although markets work wonderfully for commodities like cars and computers, the free-market principle doesn't work in health care, where the goal should hardly be selling more hysterectomies or heart bypass surgeries.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching