The People First Party (PFP) yesterday said that it plans to propose legislation that would implement “total nursing care,” which it said would only raise National Health Insurance (NHI) premiums by about NT$40 (US$1.31) per month.
The “total nursing care” proposal was presented by Eva Teng (滕西華), a long-time advocate for the rights of patients and the physically challenged, as well as the PFP’s No. 1 nominee on its legislator-at-large list.
NHI data for 2017 show that 1.95 million people were hospitalized, while there were 3.29 million hospitalizations, Teng said, adding that on average each of person stayed in hospital for 9.55 days.
Photo: Lin Liang-sheng, Taipei Times
The total value of the nursing care market is about NT$60 billion and most caretakers are women, Teng said.
Because the nation has become an aging society — with one elderly person being supported by 3.4 adults — the government should implement a “total nursing care” policy to improve the situation in hospitals, she said.
The policy would ease the burden on families, Teng added.
“If the government enforced a total nursing care policy, hospitals could train caretakers to complement the care of doctors and nurses, based on their different medical specialties,” she said.
If hospitals followed the policy, medical professionals would not be overworked and more people would be willing to become nurses, Teng said, adding that the quality of care in hospitals would also rise.
Currently, family members need to stay at the hospital if a relative becomes ill, because the family might be unsure of finding a qualified caretaker, she said.
Meanwhile, patients are anxious if left alone, Teng said, adding that the policy would reduce the burden on family members and hospitals would have more space for treating patients.
Total nursing care should be covered by the NHI, she said.
Caretakers receive an average of NT$2,100 to NT$2,400 per day, but if the expense was covered by the NHI, a person would only need to pay NT$500 to NT$700 per day, because the NHI would have NT$25 billion to NT$30 billion from premiums to cover the difference, Teng said.
If a caretaker could be hired for NT$500 per day, with the remainder covered by the NHI, people would only have their monthly premium increase about NT$40, she said.
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