A doctor has estimated that Chinese drugs that were recalled after it was discovered they contained a potentially cancer-causing ingredient resulted in additional National Health Insurance (NHI) spending of more than NT$500 million (US$16.21 million) last year.
In July last year, the Food and Drug Administration ordered the recall of millions of valsartan tablets, a blood pressure medication, after detecting of a trace of N-nitrosodimethylamine, a potential carcinogen, in the tablets supplied by Chinese pharmaceutical companies.
Taiwan Hypertension Society director Wang Tsung-tao (王宗道) said that of the approximately 2.5 million chronic hypertension patients in the nation, an estimated 10 to 20 percent were affected by the recalls and had to rebook appointments to change their prescription.
Usually chronic hypertension patients return for a checkup every three months and the medication is only available by prescription, so patients had to make an extra appointment to change drugs, he said.
According to NHI payment guidelines, a medical facility that performs a chronic hypertension examination receives a reimbursement of 2,452 relative value units (RVU) and with an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 patients needing new prescriptions, the NHI may have paid an additional 600 million to 1.2 billion RVU — between NT$500 million and NT$1 billion.
NHI Administration Deputy Director-General Tsai Shu-ling (蔡淑鈴) said that records did not show whether there had been an increase in patients returning to change their prescription.
The 2,452 RVU for chronic hypertension does not include changing prescription, so it is unfair to say that the drug recall caused additional NHI expenditure, she said, adding that the NHI system operates under a global budget, so increased visits by patients would reduce the value of an RVU.
Taiwan Pharmacist Association spokesperson Shen Tsai-ying (沈采穎) said the NHI Administration should initiate a program to follow-up on the health of patients who had used the problematic drugs.
However, Wang said that patients who had been taking the recalled drugs should not stop taking them before discussing it with their doctor, as it could cause their blood pressure to rise to unhealthy levels and also put them at risk of a stroke.
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