Stick to the real issues
"To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail," wrote Mark Twain. With the recent political upheaval surrounding the increase in health insurance fees, the opposition parties continued to pound on the ruling party with a hammer called partisanship, ignoring the real issue.
First of all, our health insurance is an insurance sponsored by the government, not a social service. Like any other insurance policy, when the budget is in the red, some of the financial burden has to be passed on to consumers.
Moreover, because it's cheap, affordable and easily accessible, our health insurance is criminally abused by the public. Exhibit number one: Taiwanese visit their doctors 15 times a year, more than any other country in Asia. Many Taiwanese, especially the elderly, go on a shopping spree when they feel ill, visiting several physicians. In the end, patients still choose not to take their prescribed medicine, instead stockpiling them at home.
Is this costing a fortune? You bet. For example, a one-month supply of Proscar for benign prostatic hypertrophy costs over NT$1,000.
Furthermore, the health insurance system tends to reward physicians who see a lot of outpatients and gives a cold shoulder those who perform operations and procedures. As a result, there is a growing shortage of surgeons in Taiwan.
In the US, the smartest graduates from medical school become neurosurgeons. In Taiwan, the smartest graduates become dermatologists. Even the NTU Hospital cannot fill its surgical residency positions. This abysmal brain drain from the highly sophisticated medical/surgical subspecialties has to stop.
Finally, "it's politics, stupid" in Taiwan as usual. The PFP accused the Insurance Bureau of handing out generous bonuses to its employees while the budget is in the red. Well, this is more of a systematic problem with the government, and it is not confined to the Insurance Bureau. For example, teachers in Taiwan do not have to pay income tax and enjoy an 18 percent interest rate on their savings, subsidized by our debt-ridden government.
With the aging of our population and the increasing cost of medicine, it's only a matter of time before our health insurance budget sinks into the red again. What are the solutions? I don't know. But I know our politicians will come out swinging their hammers again.
Kenny Liu
Hualien
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