President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday gave his backing to Department of Health (DOH) Minister Yaung Chih-liang’s (楊志良) plans to reform the National Health Insurance scheme.
“I understand that [Yaung] has been under lots of pressure. I endorse and support his policy for reforming the National Health Insurance,” Ma said during the opening speech of the annual seminar of the Formosan Medical Association at the Taipei International Convention Center yesterday.
Ma said that the National Health Insurance has been extremely popular since its launch in 1994. While the current medical budget accounted for 6.7 percent of GDP, Ma said, the end goal for the government would be to raise it to 7.5 percent.
PHOTO: CHIEN JUNG-FONG, TAIPEI TIMES
“I know that many workers are not happy with Yaung’s policy to raise premiums but that is the direction we need to go,” the president said.
Meanwhile, the president said that he was satisfied and confident about A(H1N1) influenza vaccines made by Adimmune (國光生技), a local manufacturer.
“Our foreign allies were surprised when they learned that we are capable of producing our own swine flu vaccines. This really means something, in terms of elevating Taiwan’s international position and image,” Ma said.
Approached prior to the event, Yaung said he had no problems communicating with the president.
“If he is unhappy with my performance and wanted me to leave, I would not be here talking to you,” Yaung said.
Regarding the National Health Insurance scheme’s financial problems, Yaung said that he was worried about potential bankruptcy.
“It is like a drought. The reservoir is drying out, but there is no rain. Expenses for insurance are increasing, now that we have more senior citizens and fewer younger people,” Yaung said. “We at the DOH are doing all that we can to solve this problem.”
Meanwhile, the minister again urged the public not to panic over US beef. He said that risks associated with eating US beef are “minimal.”
The minister said that it is the government’s job to make ample information regarding the US beef issue freely available so the public does not panic and can make their own decisions whether they want to eat US beef.
At a separate event later in the day, Ma reiterated the promise that the government would only import US beef from cattle younger than 30 months to ensure public safety.
Ma said the risk of getting mad cow disease by consuming US ground beef, bone-in beef and internal organs was extremely low, and said the government would tighten inspection measures to ensure that the meat on the market met standards.
“The government will demand government bodies tighten gate-keeping measures and communicate with the public that US beef is basically safe,” he said yesterday during a meeting at Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) headquarters in his capacity as party chairman.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY MO YAN-CHIH
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