The National Health Insurance (NHI) system might not survive the next decade if no premium increases are imposed in response to the nation’s aging population, former health minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) said yesterday.
Yaung made the remarks at a ceremony held by the National Health Insurance Administration in Taipei to mark the 20th anniversary of the implementation of the health insurance program.
While giving the NHI program a score of 85 out of 100, Yaung said he cannot yet call the program a success, because it still requires financial reform to help it ride out Taiwan’s rapidly aging society and dwindling birth rate.
“The country’s population pyramid is moving toward an upside-down triangle, meaning we have a high percentage of elderly people, but not enough newborns,” Yaung said. “Given that Taiwanese tend to be short-sighted, I cannot see the NHI scheme making it through the next 10 years unless serious thought is given to the topic of raising the insurance premium.”
Yaung’s advice is in accord with opinions set forth in an advisory report published by the second-generation NHI program review team in October last year.
The report consisted of 36 suggestions for the NHI system, including a series of changes to its calculations for premiums and letting babies born to non-Taiwanese parents in the nation be covered by the NHI program upon birth, rather than after six months, as per current rules.
Yaung said it is a well-known fact that a large proportion of the NHI’s resources have been wasted on unnecessary treatment.
“Hence, the key to creating a sustainable public health insurance system is not to increase the program’s reimbursements for medications and medical therapies, but to raise premiums,” Yaung said.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chiang Been-huang (蔣丙煌) said the ministry has taken the advisory report’s opinions into consideration and plans to gather a group of specialists to exchange thoughts on the matter.
“We will absorb what is good and leave out what is not. Hopefully, this will help us draw up a more thorough revision of the National Health Insurance Act (全民健康保險法) within three years,” Chiang said.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
China’s newest Type-076 amphibious assault ship has two strengths and weaknesses, wrote a Taiwanese defense expert, adding that further observations of its capabilities are warranted. Jiang Hsin-biao (江炘杓), an assistant researcher at the National Defense and Security Research, made the comments in a report recently published by the institute about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military and political development. China christened its new assault ship Sichuan in a ceremony on Dec. 27 last year at Shanghai’s Hudong Shipyard, China’s Xinhua news agency reported. “The vessel, described as the world’s largest amphibious assault ship by the [US think tank] Center for Strategic and International
RSS