Don't abuse medical care
An old veteran was in the news recently for having made more than 700 visits to doctors this year alone. Such an excessive number of visits is an obvious waste of medical resources. However, authorities said "he still has the right to join the health-insurance program because the government has already paid all the fees for him."
This case might be unique, but I think it shows that a large proportion of people still think that they have to go to the hospital as often as possible. They would rather get some vitamins or pills in a hospital than think they are paying for medical insurance without using it.
I think medical resources should be reserved for people in need, not divided equally among everyone. As a medical student, I think it is necessary for insurance fees to be scaled according to income levels. And I think service charges should be increased, especially at large hospitals, so that our limited resources won't be wasted by those who don't need them.
If we want higher quality care, we also have to reduce the huge numbers of patients a doctor has to see in a day.
Taiwan's health-insurance system makes medical coverage much cheaper than it is in the West, so the pubic should not expect doctors to provide services at Western levels. If we want to have higher quality care, we should be willing to pay higher insurance fees.
Chou Wei-ting
Taipei
No one is perfect
In recent months, several editorials and comments appearing in the Taipei Times criticized Taiwan's "violation of human rights," most notably from Brian Kennedy. My question is: What constitutes human rights and what is the definition of "violation"? There appears to be a double standard.
Having grown up in Taiwan during the martial law era, I have witnessed probably the most dramatic transformation of a government from an authoritarian regime to the most vibrant democracy in Asia. We still have a long way to go. But I have faith that we will get there. Being educated in the US, I have also witnessed the workings of a "graying" democracy and the "land of opportunity." But I don't think everyone concurs with the definition of "human rights" used by the US.
The Taiwan-born American scientist Lee Wen-ho (李文和) was held in a US jail for 10 months without charges, in solitary confinement and shackled with handcuffs and chains. I am not going to comment on the pros or cons of the espionage case against him, but Lee's civil rights were clearly violated.
I have always believed that the US should be a role model for respect of human rights. But often when Americans leave US soil, the concept of "rule of law" is thrown out of window.
During the Vietnam War, Lieutenant William Calley was tried for murder -- and acquitted -- for directing his men to fire point blank at Vietnamese civilians in My Lai, killing more than 500 mostly unarmed women and children.
In Okinawa, there are repeated stories of US servicemen accused of raping under-age girls and the US officials deliberately delaying the transfer of the suspects to Japanese authorities. CNN has reported that the US is concerned about the "rights" of the servicemen in the hands of the Japanese authorities, but the pain and the suffering of the victims and their families were never mentioned.
Here in Taiwan we all know about the vandalism committed by a kid from the Taipei American School and his taunting of the police and the authorities.
Many times I hear and read about comments and editorials by our American friends here which are not only politically incorrect, but racist. These people would lose their jobs if they made the same comments in the US.
How do we combat this sort of arrogance and condescen-sion? Its simple: Respect one another. Remember that everyone we see is the most important person to somebody.
Kenny Liu
Hualien
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Acting Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) has formally announced his intention to stand for permanent party chairman. He has decided that he is the right person to steer the fledgling third force in Taiwan’s politics through the challenges it would certainly face in the post-Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) era, rather than serve in a caretaker role while the party finds a more suitable candidate. Huang is sure to secure the position. He is almost certainly not the right man for the job. Ko not only founded the party, he forged it into a one-man political force, with himself
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