Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday expressed regrets over the passing of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) version of the Long-term Care Services Act (長期照顧服務法), which she said fails to provide a stable source of funding, and might evolve into a superficial and empty law.
“The passing yesterday [Friday] of the Long-term Care Services Act at the legislature should have been something to celebrate. However, since the KMT did not stipulate a source of funding for the act, and also rejected a DPP proposal to create tax revenues from inheritance and gifts, as well as real-estate sales, for policy funding, this law will not provide any change for families,” Tsai said.
“As civic groups said, the Long-term Care Services Act adopted by the KMT caucus is one that is short of funding, superficial, and irresponsible. This is very regrettable,” Tsai wrote on Facebook.
According to estimates, the budget for the long-term care system would begin at NT$30 billion (US$980 million) per year, and would increase to NT$50 billion a year. The KMT version of the legislation would provide a total of NT$12 billion budget over five years, or NT$2.4 billion per year.
That is “extremely ridiculous,” Tsai said.
“President Ma Ying-jeou’s [馬英九] administration claims that the budget would be sufficient to take care of 1 million people, but we calculate the budget can only provide each person with NT$200 a month, which is enough for two hours of home-care service. Is this the best that the government can do for elderly people in this country?” Tsai said.
At the core of the DPP’s long-term care system proposal are sufficient funding, with full-time care, and the government shouldering the responsibility, she said.
“Although the DPP proposal has been blocked by the KMT, we will not give up pushing for a more complete long-term care system through amending the law to make sure that there is a big enough budget to source of funding with legal basis,” Tsai said.
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
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
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