The Executive Yuan may allow people who can't pay their national health insurance premiums to write off outstanding charges and interests accrued on defaulted payments or to halve penalties, a Cabinet official revealed yesterday.
"As the scheme is designed to let the better-off help the disadvantaged, we thought we should offer help to those who are have signed up to the scheme but have fallen behind in their payments because of financial difficulties," said Cabinet Secretary-General Liu Shih-fang (劉世芳).
According to Liu, the Cabinet is scheduled to approve the draft amendments of the National Health Insurance Law (
If approved, about 130,000 people are estimated to benefit from the change.
Those who cannot afford their premiums currently have to pay off the defaults, interests accrued on the nonpayment and penalty payment before they are eligible to restart coverage.
Under the draft, however, no interest would be accrued on outstanding premiums of mentally and physically challenged people and those whose monthly income is less than NT$20,000.
They would also be eligible for having their outstanding premiums and interests written off or having their outstanding penalty payment halved.
The percentage of the penalty payment would also be reduced from 0.2 percent to 0.1 percent of the default.
The ceiling of the penalty payment would be pegged down from 30 percent to 50 percent of the default.
The draft would also allow those in "extreme financial difficulty" who have never been covered by the scheme to be eligible for the coverage within a year after the default is written off.
Those deemed in the lesser category of "dire financial difficulty" would be eligible for a five-year delay in paying the default and penalty payment. They could also have the default written off if their financial situation shows no sign of improving.
Those who have been covered by the scheme but have fallen behind with their premiums would be eligible for a delay in paying the default for five years.
Once the draft is approved, the Department of Health would be responsible for defining such terms as "extreme financial difficulty" and "dire financial difficulty."
In addition to the change, opposition lawmakers have been aggressively pushing for another amendment of the same rules to make legislative consent necessary for future hikes on the health insurance premium.
They have threatened to deprive the health department of the power to adjust national health insurance fees if it refuses to observe a legislative resolution demanding an end to recent fee hikes.
Meanwhile, Liu yesterday cited international review indexes to show the revival of the local economy.
"I hope those who don't have much confidence in the economy would pay more attention to the facts because statistics talk," she said.
"As the highest administrative body, we have the obligation to tell the public about how hard we've been trying to improve the economy and how much improvement we've made," she added.
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