A planned hike in the cost of medical treatment at emergency rooms (ER) of hospitals for mild injuries or illnesses will not apply to late-night admissions starting in January, Minister of Health and Welfare Lin Tzou-yien (林奏延) said yesterday.
Lin made the announcement during a speech at Medical Week, a two-day conference held in Taipei this weekend.
The National Health Insurance Administration on Oct. 7 presented to the Legislative Yuan its plan to increase the cost of emergency visits for mild injuries or illness as a means to normalize the hospital classification system.
In his speech, titled “Medical reform without burdens,” Lin spoke of strategies to improve the hospital classification system, such as enhancing basic medical facilities’ service capabilities, guiding the public to comply with patient referral systems, differentiating treatment copayment fees, reducing mild illness treatment services at medical centers and increasing people’s knowledge of self-care.
He said the cost of treatment at emergency rooms for medical conditions ranging between level 3 and level 5 would be increased from NT$450 to NT$550, adding that the price hike would not apply to treatments between midnight and 6am.
However, Lin said the policy must be approved by the National Health Insurance Committee before it can be put into effect next year.
In addition, he said a NT$6 billion (US$188.7 million) budget would be allocated to pay for critical illness care at regional hospitals and medical centers.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods