The National Identification Card, National Health Insurance Card and Digital Citizen’s Certificate could be integrated into a single card by 2018, Minister of the Interior Chen Wei-zen (陳威仁) said yesterday.
Chen said the ministry plans to allocate NT$8.8 billion (US$269.5 million) to integrate the three cards.
His remarks sparked criticism from Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄), who said the Ministry of Finance had already reached an agreement with the Ministry of Health and Welfare to allow the National Health Insurance Card to be used to pay taxes, one of the functions of the Digital Citizen’s Certificate.
Chuang asked whether the Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the Digital Citizen’s Certificate and the National Identification Card, has coordinated with other departments, adding that developing redundant card features would be a waste of public funds.
The Digital Citizen’s Certificate allows users to verify their identity online to access a range of government services. The ministry has previously announced plans to integrate it with the National Identification Card, enabling the card to be used as a digital purse.
Chen said that integrating the three cards would be safer than adding Digital Citizen’s Certificate features to the National Health Insurance Card, but that meetings still had to be held with the Ministry of Health and Welfare before the Cabinet makes a final decision.
If plans to integrate the three cards are implemented, there would be no need to issue new National Health Insurance Cards, he said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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