Department of Health (DOH) officials yesterday dismissed a media report that said the agency blamed the nation’s aging population for the National Health Insurance (NHI) program’s huge financial deficit, saying that the increase in the number of elderly was just one of many factors.
Chu Tong-kuang (曲同光), a deputy convener of a DOH task force on insurance premiums, called a press conference at the Government Information Office to clarify the report in yesterday’s Chinese-language Liberty Times, (the Taipei Times’ sister paper).
The report said that the DOH had attributed the cause of the soaring cost of NHI reimbursements to the increase in the nation’s elderly population, despite the fact that reimbursements have risen disproportionately over the years.
Citing statistics on NHI reimbursements for medical expenses, Chu said that the annual rate of growth in medical expenses had remained stable in recent years, lower than 5 percent, which is lower than the average of 6 percent in most advanced counties.
“The number of elderly people has increased by 38 percent over the past ten years, while medical expenses have risen 169 percent,” Chu said.
Regarding the causes of the surge in medical expenses, Chu said that other than the increase in the elderly population, there were increases in the number of people suffering major illnesses, such as cancer and kidney disease. Also, the introduction of new medicines and new medical devices had caused costs to sky rocket.
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