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Prisoners must get health coverage, say MOJ officials

Officials from the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) said yesterday that it is necessary to provide national health insurance coverage to prison inmates.

MOJ officials have been in contact with their Department of Health (DOH) counterparts for discussions on technical problems pertaining to the issue, said Wu Yu-ming (吳友銘), a commissioner with the MOJ's Department of Corrections.

A group of legislators urged yesterday that the country's prison inmates, numbering about 50,000, be allowed to join the national health insurance program in a bid to better protect the prisoners' human rights.

Legislators Lin Kuo-ching (林國慶), Lu Tien-lin (盧天麟), Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) and Huang Shu-fen (黃淑英) from the Democratic Progressive Party jointly held a press conference calling for the immediate implementation of new health regulations to make inmates eligible for national health insurance coverage.

Lin said it is ridiculous that while Taiwan calls itself "a country of human rights," its 50,000 inmates are excluded from the national health insurance program.

He noted that Chinese spouses of Taiwanese citizens are entitled to join the national health insurance program and that even illegal immigrants from China are provided with free health care based on humanitarian considerations.

Hung Pi-lan (洪碧蘭), an official from the Bureau of National Health Insurance who attended the press conference, said that the Executive Yuan instructed in November last year that relevant agencies should begin to study the issue pertaining to national health insurance coverage for inmates.

The DOH authorities have since convened several meetings with MOJ officials and conducted surveys on the matter, but the prisoners have still not been provided with coverage as several technical problems remain to be tackled, Hung said.

These problems include the support of medical and law enforcement personnel, whether and how medical doctors and nurses should be dispatched to prisons, and how prisoners should pay their national health insurance premiums, he added.

According to Hung, the government will have to subsidize the health program with an additional NT$700 million (US$21.2 million) a year if coverage is provided to the 50,000 inmates.
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