An increase in the minimum stock dividend income level on which “supplemental” health insurance premiums are charged could cost the National Health Insurance system NT$500 million (US$15.3 million) in revenues a year, a senior official said yesterday.
National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) Director-General Huang San-kuei (黃三桂) told a legislative hearing that if the stock dividend income threshold were raised from NT$5,000 to NT$10,000, the government would lose NT$500 million in revenue a year.
Raising the threshold could affect 1 million people, Huang said.
Lawmakers have been pressing the government to reduce its revenues after the health insurance system’s reserve fund hit a record high.
As of the end of July, the reserve fund had accumulated NT$200 billion, thanks to the introduction of the supplemental premium in Jan. 1, 2013. The reserve now has enough to cover four-and-a-half months of spending.
The health insurance system is largely financed by a premium collected based on a worker’s basic salary.
After the program ran into financial difficulties and amid complaints that the wealthy were not paying their fair share, a supplemental premium was added, charging 2 percent on non-salary or outside income of at least NT$5,000 from professional fees, stock dividends, income from part-time jobs and bank interest.
The NHIA has already lifted the threshold at which supplemental premiums on part-time income are collected from NT$5,000 to the minimum monthly wage of NT$20,008.
Many lawmakers and others have said that now the reserve fund is in a healthy state, the minimum threshold for other types of income should be raised or the premium rate of 2 percent lowered.
Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) on Tuesday told lawmakers that the Cabinet could study the feasibility of changing the system.
However, Huang yesterday said that with health care spending by the NHIA increasing at a rate of 3 percent a year, any attempt to reduce revenues from the supplemental premium could lead to the system losing money again in 2017.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare is responsible for making any adjustments to the supplemental premium system, and he expects it to decide on the issue by the end of this year or early next year, Huang said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,