The head of the Veterans Affairs Council yesterday voiced confidence in its ability to run Taipei Veterans General Hospital and its branches, one of the nation’s largest medical systems, amid calls to transfer the hospitals to other government agencies.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康) said the council did not have the capability to lead a medical facility and has failed to properly supervise Taipei Veterans General Hospital, thereby allowing a contractor to make illegal profits by using the hospital’s facilities.
In the case Tuan was referring to the hospital and the council received corrections from the Control Yuan.
Tuan said he would propose a bill to merge Taipei Veterans General Hospital with National Yang-Ming University under the supervision of the Ministry of Education, or put its medical centers in Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung under the Ministry of Health and Welfare or other agencies.
Veterans Affairs Council Minister Lee Hsiang-jow (李翔宙) told a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee that he could not accept Tuan’s accusations or his reorganization proposals.
“By Tuan’s logic, the Tri-Service General Hospitals and armed forces general hospitals, run by the Ministry of National Defense, should be transferred to the health ministry,” Lee said.
“Such organizational changes would involve national development policies on a large scale. Reorganization should be deliberated over and complete planning is needed,” Lee said.
The council has offered senior health services to nursing homes run by the council, and while the council used to provide low-priced medical services only to veterans who had served for more than 10 years, such discounts are now available to all voluntary service personnel, regardless of length of service or rank, creating a medical safety net for military personnel, Lee said.
DPP Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) questioned the minister about a council plan for the Taipei hospital to establish team to provide 24-hour medical service to veterans protesting the government’s pension reform plans outside the Legislative Yuan, which is a block from the National Taiwan University Hospital.
Lee said the plan was only on paper and has not been carried out.
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:
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