Legislators yesterday urged Department of Health (DOH) officials to make a clear list of all the types of income on which households will be charged when calculating national health insurance premiums for the proposed second-generation health plan.
DOH officials continued to answer legislators’ questions about the proposed amendments to the National Health Insurance Act (全民健康保險法) at the legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee meeting.
Chu Tong-kuang (曲同光), a deputy convener of a DOH task force on insurance premiums, said that the types of income to be used when calculating premiums would include regular salary, subsidies, bonuses, bank deposit interest, rent and cash prizes from contests.
However, no consensus has yet been reached on whether to deduct donations to not-for-profit organizations from total income.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yang Li-huan (楊麗環) urged officials to make a clear list of the types of income used in calculations, as well as a list of the types of income on which premiums will not be based.
However, lawmakers remained skeptical on whether the plan would allow the super rich to fall off the radar of the national health insurance system by clever accounting methods.
“The expansion of the second- generation health plan would only burden the working class with regular salaries,” said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英).
DPP Legislator Chen Chieh-ju (陳節如) had similar worries.
“The super rich, whose main income does not come from their paycheck, will still escape [paying large premiums],” she said.
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