National Taiwan University Hospital physician Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who is the pan-green candidate in the Taipei mayoral election in November, yesterday identified problems facing the healthcare system at the fourth Cross-Strait Medical Interchange Academic Symposium in Taipei.
The symposium was held by the Taiwan Cross-Strait Medical Interchange Association and the Taiwan External Trade Development Council at Exhibition Hall 1 of the Taipei World Trade Center yesterday.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文) and independent Taipei mayoral aspirant Shen Fu-hsiung (沈富雄), a former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker, had planned to attend, but both cancelled at the last minute.
“Many people have told me how much they are dissatisfied with the National Health Insurance [NHI] program, but there is something they do not know: Advanced medical technologies and high-quality healthcare require money,” Ko said in a speech.
Ko said the NHI program’s low efficiency and financial deficit was a political and economic problem, rather than a medical one.
“Nearly 50 percent of patients at National Taiwan University Hospital who were given prolonged CPR using the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation [ECMO] machine were able to leave the hospital alive. However, if we want every hospital’s emergency room to be equipped with an ECMO machine without having to pay higher NHI premiums, that simply cannot be done,” Ko said.
The NHI program is doomed to collapse if it keeps asking the insured to pay what they usually pay for social insurance premium, but giving them the kind of treatment they usually receive from a social welfare scheme, Ko said.
Ko said another problem is the NHI’s refusal to promote preventative health knowledge.
“The reason is simple. Hospitals can only make money when there are people getting sick, which is why the NHI program does not encourage doctors to give their patients the most cost-effective treatments, but ones that can generate the most revenue,” Ko said.
Ko said the top priority of the medical community for the next 20 years should be incorporating the most efficient industrial management approaches into hospitals’ daily operations, instead of developing new medicines and technologies.
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