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DOH under fire over premiums

The National Health Insurance Civic Surveillance Alliance (NHICSA) yesterday denounced the Department of Health’s (DOH) plan to raise National Health Insurance (NHI) premiums.

The criticism came a day after DOH Minister Yaung Chih-­liang (楊志良) said the department had almost completed a plan to raise health insurance premiums to help prop up the nation’s financially shaky health insurance program. Under the plan, Yaung said, the insurance premium rate will be increased from 4.55 percent to 5 percent of the monthly insured amount, adding that for those in the lower income bracket who will be required to pay more, the increase will only be equivalent to the price of a pack of instant noodles.

The current NHI system requires the employee, employers and local governments to share insurance premiums.

However, local governments — notably Taipei City, Taipei County and Kaohsiung City — owe US$71.2 billion (US$2.2 billion) in unpaid premiums to the DOH.

“It doesn’t make sense that, rather than collecting premiums owed by local governments, the DOH tries to fill the financial gap by getting more money from the public,” NHICSA spokeswoman Eva Teng (滕西華) told a news conference.

“We urge the DOH to try everything first — revising the law and asking local governments to repay their debts — before raising the premium for the people,” Teng said.

Using Yang’s food analogy, the money owed could buy more than 1.2 billion NT$60 lunchboxes, she said.

“Why do the people have to pay for the debts that local governments should have paid for?” Teng asked.

Son Yu-lian (孫友聯), another member of the alliance, urged Minister of Justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) to quickly auction six Taipei City properties seized by the judiciary during the past six years.

“We’re planning to file a petition with the Control Yuan against the Control Yuan, because it is not doing anything about the petition we filed in February against local governments for not even attempting to repay the debts,” Son said.

“The NHICSA cannot accept the plan to raise premiums without trying first to fix the problem on the government side,” Son said. “We will organize demonstrations if the DOH insists on doing so.”

Legislators from across the political spectrum also unanimously voiced opposition yesterday to the plan to raise the national health insurance premium rate from next year, saying the time was not right for such a move.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus secretary-general Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟) said raising the premium at the moment was “out of the question” unless the government proposed simultaneous plans to resolve the NHI’s financial problems.

KMT caucus deputy ­secretary-general Cheng Ru-fen (鄭汝芬) said she wondered whether the problems would be resolved by increasing premiums, adding that the government should not go ahead with the adjustment unless it first won the approval of the public.

Democratic Progressive Party legislative whip Wang Sing-nan (王幸男) said the party would not like to see an upward adjustment of insurance premiums at this time as the domestic economy has not yet emerged from the country’s worst-ever recession.

Wang said the proposed premium hike should not be introduced until the Taipei City government repays its debts to the Bureau of National Health Insurance.

In response, Yaung yesterday said that “adjusting National Health Insurance rates would be the last option” and premiums would not be raised for the time being.

“Solving the NHI’s financial problems is the biggest priority, especially as we have more and more senior citizens and more and more new and expensive technology,” Yaung told a press conference at the DOH.

Debts owed by local governments will be targeted in the future, he said.

Yaung said that DOH has been negotiating with the local governments and progress has been made.

“It is our goal to amend the law so that the Cabinet will be able to pay the premiums on behalf of all local governments, so the problem can be solved for good. I hope this amendment will be supported and endorsed by the legislature,” Yaung said.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY FLORA WANG, JIMMY CHUANG AND CNA
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