The Cabinet yesterday approved a change to health insurance that would result in premiums being calculated on the basis of annual household income as opposed to the current system, which is based on registered insurance subscriptions — a rough equivalent of an employee’s monthly salary.
“About half the people in large or low-income households will see premiums decrease, while the other half will have to pay more,” Department of Health (DOH) Minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) told a press conference following the meeting.
If the amendment to the National Health Insurance Act (全民健康保險法) passes the legislature, the premium will be calculated by multiplying an as yet undetermined premium rate by an individual’s annual household income and then dividing the figure by the number of family members.
Currently, the premium for an insured employee is set at 30 percent of 4.55 percent of the insurer’s registered insurance subscription, with the government shouldering 10 percent of the cost and employers paying the remaining 60 percent.
Annual household income in the new system, dubbed “the second-generation national health insurance system,” is the same as taxable income defined by the Income Tax Act (所得稅法), which includes wages, interest income, income from professional practices, dividends and other profit-seeking practices, leases, royalties and property transactions, among others.
With the expansion of the premium base, the new premium rate is expected to be between 3 percent and 3.5 percent.
As an example, Yaung said the current premium for a single person in the NT$50,000 insurance bracket is about NT$700 per month and NT$3,000 if the person needs to provide for three dependents. Under the proposed system, a person whose salary is the only source of annual household income would pay NT$1,600 — no matter if they are single or have dependents.
“Although the change will increase the burden on single people, for a family of four for example, premiums will be significantly reduced,” Yaung said.
Yaung called on the public not to consider the new premium system a “punishment” for people who are not married.
“[Being able to pay more to the system] is a form of charity,” he said.
The spirit of the new system that “bigger earners help lower earners, the employed help the jobless, healthy people help sick people and those who have fewer family members help those with more” is in line with the basic principles of social insurance systems adopted universally,” Yaung said.
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), who was also present at the press conference, said that he felt “sorry” for asking single people to pay more.
Wu said the government has other measures in place to help single people such as offering partial mortgage interest relief for first-time buyers.
When asked whether that proposal wasn’t restricted to married people, Wu said: “We encourage people to get married.”
The current system, introduced in 1995, has been fraught with inequality as those whose income comes from sources other than salary pay the same as those whose salary is their only source of income.
If the legislature passes the proposed amendment before the end of the current session in June, the new system could come into effect as early as 2012.
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