About NT$25 (US$0.83) out of every NT$100 in National Health Insurance (NHI) premiums paid by the public last year was spent on treatments for patients with catastrophic illnesses, statistics from the National Health Insurance Administration show.
A total of 915,254 people held catastrophic illness cards as of December last year, which accounted for 3.87 percent of all NHI-insured individuals, a decrease of 8,142 from the previous year, the data showed.
The combined cost to the NHI program was NT$167.9 billion, about 27.3 percent of the total medical expenses over the same period, an increase of NT$5.39 billion from 2013, the agency said.
The drop in the number of catastrophic illness card holders could be due to the agency’s revision of criteria for the issuance of the cards in September 2013, when it stopped issuing cards to cancer patients who had their malignant tumors completely removed and no longer required active treatment.
“Despite the decline in the number of the cards, the medical expenses did not drop,” agency staffer Wu Ching-sung (吳錦松) said.
“That was mainly because medical costs are generally the highest during the first year of treatment for cancer patients, as they have to undergo massive surgeries or targeted cancer therapies during this period,” he said.
Wu said that 47.7 percent of the cardholders have cancer, followed by 21 percent with chronic mental illness, 9.8 percent with autoimmune diseases, 7.8 percent with chronic kidney failure requiring routine dialysis and 3.7 percent with congenital malformations.
Compared with the 2013 statistics, the largest decline was seen in the number of people given a card due to liver cirrhosis: 5.9 percent. Trailing was cancer, dropping by 3.7 percent, chronic mental illnesses (0.8 percent) and congenital malformation (0.4 percent).
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