Eighty percent of respondents to a survey conducted by the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) said they or their families did not overuse healthcare services, but close to 70 percent said others did.
The NHIA recently conducted an awareness survey on medical resource overuse, asking people whether they or their families have been repeatedly visiting doctors or procuring more than one prescription for the same ailments or symptoms.
Eighty percent of respondents said they had not overused medical resources, while 20 percent believed they had caused healthcare waste.
When asked whether they thought others overused healthcare services, 67.5 percent of respondents said that they did.
Instances of overuse cited by respondents included receiving the same prescription more than once for the same illness by visiting different practitioners (19.9 percent), ignorance of medicine and a tendency to hoard drugs (19.6 percent) and hoping to “earn back” the National Health Insurance (NHI) premiums they have paid by visiting doctors (18.8 percent).
However, 17.3 percent of respondents believed that the overuse was caused by those who visit more than one medical facility to get a second opinion, while 12.2 percent thought it came from people not finishing their prescriptions, either because they had recovered or because they forgot to take the drugs.
Health officials reminded the public that minor illnesses such as colds do not necessarily require shots or medication, but can be treated with rest and fluids.
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:
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