President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration’s attempt to set up profit-making international medical centers in the planned free economic pilot zones could increase a shortage of doctors elsewhere and create an “M-shaped healthcare system,” the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) said yesterday.
According to Article 49 of the draft of the special act for free economic pilot zones (自由經濟示範區特別條例草案), the government plans to entrust the Ministry of Health and Welfare with stipulating the regulations governing the centers’ capital and such details as the boards’ numbers and their ratio of medical practitioners to foreigners, TSU Policy Committee Chairman Hsu Chung-hsin (許忠信) told a press conference in Taipei yesterday.
“The inclusion of regulations governing the capital of the centers into the draft act suggests that the government intends for the medical centers to be profit-making corporations,” Hsu said.
Hsu said as for-profit organizations were allowed to share profits with their shareholders and employees, they naturally offered more appealing employment incentives than non-profit hospitals.
“It is only a matter of time before all the nation’s finest doctors jump ship to higher-paying jobs at the pilot zones and become money-driven, leaving hospitals elsewhere with nothing but mediocre physicians and an everlasting challenge to find qualified staff,” Hsu said.
The former legislator said that the phenomenon could also create what he called an “M-shaped healthcare system,” where the wealthy pay a fortune for top-notch medical treatment at the pilot zones and the less well-off are forced to make do with substandard care at non-profit medical facilities.
Critics and opposition parties have raised their concerns that the project could provide a camouflage for back-room deals and ill-designed import regulations.
“Is it really worth enduring all the side-effects of the pilot zones just for a little economic growth?” Hsu said.
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