Premier Liu Chao-hsiuan (劉兆玄) and Department of Health (DOH) Minister Yeh Ching-chuan (葉金川) came under fire from legislators and civic groups this week over a Cabinet plan to separate the issues of National Health Insurance (NHI) subsidy debts owed by local governments and confiscation of government-owned land, with one group demanding that Liu and Yeh step down if it proceeds.
The calls came after Liu’s visit to the DOH earlier this week when he said that while some local governments had unpaid health insurance debts, confiscation of property would result in ineffective use of the land. He suggested the two issues be handled separately.
Yeh agreed with the premier, saying that government agencies should negotiate with each other instead of taking matters to court or confiscating land.
Lawmakers criticized the plan, saying that local governments who were accumulating debt on purpose should be punished and that the plan was unfair to local governments that have been paying their health insurance payments on time.
While Kaohsiung City Government has introduced an eight-year plan for paying its health insurance subsidy debts, Taipei City Government does not even have a plan, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ho Tsai-feng (侯彩鳳) said.
Taipei City Government should make its payments just like any other local government, KMT Legislator Daniel Hwang (黃義交) said.
The NHI belongs to everybody and most people work hard to pay their health insurance premiums, so we cannot let Taipei City Government purposely ignore its debts and allow government agencies to make a secret deal under the table, Alliance for Surveillance of the National Health Insurance spokesperson Eva Teng (滕西華) said.
The alliance said it would urge the NHI Fund Supervisory Committee to demand that Taipei City Government pay off its subsidy debts in order to prove its responsibility to the public.
They also said Liu and Yeh should step down if the government went ahead with their plan, or else they would call on the public to refuse to pay their NHI fees.
Bureau of NHI statistics showed that subsidy debts currently owed by local governments total NT$54.4 billion (US$1.65 billion), with Taipei City Government alone owing NT$29.4 billion.
Past lawsuits resulted in a Supreme Administrative Court ruling against Taipei City Government last year and it was told to pay off the debt that had accrued between 1999 and 2002.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods