The Ministry of Health and Welfare would evaluate the pros and cons of a proposal to implement an insurance system to support the Long-term Care Services Development Fund, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said yesterday.
Chen made the remark at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee after the Ministry of Finance asked the health ministry to assess the feasibility of a long-term care insurance program.
Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, last week said in a weekly livestream that if he is elected president, he would launch a long-term care insurance program jointly paid for by policyholders, employers and the government.
Han’s policy advisers have said that the Long-term Care Services Program 2.0, implemented by President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration, has an unstable budget source, as it is mainly financed by tobacco and inheritance taxes, and that it would not meet the growing needs for long-term care.
The fund last year had income of NT$36.346 billion (US$1.171 billion), which is expected to fall to about NT$34 billion this year, while expenditures last year totaled NT$1.631 billion, so there is currently sufficient income to finance the policy, Chen said.
However, the finance ministry said that while the need for long-term care services is expected to continue growing, the Financial Discipline Act (財政紀律法) passed by the legislature in April could reduce the flexibility in obtaining money for the fund.
As under the act the health ministry may no longer request an increase in the fixed amount or percentage of tax incomes alloted to support the fund, the finance ministry had asked it to evaluate alternative sources of financing, including launching an insurance system.
The health ministry has discussed and compared various financial plans, and would appropriately distribute and use the fund’s income, Chen said, adding that it would evaluate the current system, as well as the pros and cons of an insurance system.
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,