Department of Health Minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) said yesterday that health insurance premium rates would be raised within six months to help solve the National Health Insurance system’s shortfalls.
In an interview on a local radio station, Yaung Chih-liang reiterated the need for higher premium rates but said other measures to cut costs and increase revenues were being considered.
“I will do my best to carry out the government’s policy of premium adjustment for the National Health Insurance within six months,” Yaung said.
Prior to last Saturday’s local elections, Yaung said a premium rate hike was necessary but denied that there was a timetable for such a move. At the time, he said the premium, set at 4.55 percent of monthly salaries with a ceiling of NT$131,700, is much lower than what he described as the “reasonable rate” of 6.97 percent.
He warned that if the premium wasn’t raised the health system would be bankrupt in 10 years.
Those comments led some Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators to blame him for the party’s poor showing in Saturday’s polls.
Yaung said yesterday that he respected the lawmakers’ opinions and admitted that it had been “bad timing” to talk about hiking premium rates before the elections.
He said he would take “general responsibility” for it, but he did not back down from his stance that a rate hike was necessary, especially as Taiwan’s population continues to age.
A senior citizen costs approximately 3.3 times more in medical expenses than a younger person, he said, which was the main reason for the system’s financial problems.
Rising health care expenses averaging about US$1,000 per person per year have taken their toll on the health system’s finances.
The economically disadvantaged would suffer the most if the program shut down because the wealthy could afford private insurance alternatives, he said.
As for the timing of a rate hike, Yaung said he hoped to accomplish it within six months and would do all he can to make it happen, though other measures were also under consideration to ease the burden of rate hikes on the poor.
“The ultimate goal is for economically disadvantaged groups to pay less but enjoy the same health care protection as those who can afford insurance and help to pay more,” he said.
Yaung also said he would call on legislators to convince them that a rate hike is necessary.
The health insurance program’s accumulated deficit will reach NT$50 billion by the end of this year, he said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JIMMY CHUANG
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