A Facebook post by a US student who talked about his experience of receiving high-quality, low-cost medical care in Taiwan has gone viral and has been picked up by the Washington Post.
Kevin Bozeat, 25, who is studying in Taiwan, related how efficiently he was treated when he went to the emergency room of a Taiwanese hospital with severe gastrointestinal symptoms.
“I was immediately checkedin by an English-speaking nurse,” Bozeat wrote on Feb. 17 in a post titled “Went to the ER in Taiwan.”
“Within 20 minutes I was given IV fluids and anti-emetics. They took blood tests and did an ultrasound to ensure it wasn’t gall stones or appendicitis. From there I was given a diagnosis: a particularly severe case of Acute Viral Gastroenteritis (aka the stomach flu),” he wrote.
He said he was later discharged with a prescription for anti-emetics and pain medication, and was back to normal after a few days.
The total bill for the hospital visit and medication was US$80, Bozeat said, adding that if he had National Health Insurance (NHI) coverage it would have been less.
“This could have easily cost me hundreds or even thousands in the US without insurance. But here in Taiwan I was able to receive speedy, quality care comparable to what I would have gotten in a US hospital for relatively small amount of money,” Bozeat wrote. “Given this experience, I no longer have a reason to fear or hesitate getting care in Taiwan should I ever need it.”
His post has since gained more than 120,000 likes on Facebook and has been shared 210,000 times. It was also referenced in a Washington Post report on Feb. 28 that mentioned Taiwan’s health insurance system amid intensifying debates about healthcare in the US.
In a follow-up post on Feb. 24, Bozeat said he wanted to make a clarifying statement in response to some of the comments on his first post.
“This system exists because the Taiwanese government believes that healthcare is a right for all of its citizens, rather than a privilege for those who can afford it,” he wrote, citing a Ministry of Health and Welfare English-language brochure.
The Washington Post, citing a report released last month by the journal Health Affairs, said about 6.1 percent of Taiwan’s GDP was spent on healthcare in 2017, whereas the US spent about 17.2 percent of its GDP on healthcare during the same period.
DELUSIONAL: The male patient said he did not know that the woman had mental problems, but the court said that her being restrained in isolation should have given him pause The Taiwan High Court has ordered the Jhudong branch of the Taiwan National University Hospital and a male patient to jointly pay a former female patient’s family NT$400,000 in compensation after the man had sex with the woman, who has mental problems, while hospitalized. The 26-year-old woman has been diagnosed with a mental disorder, a symptom of which is that she obsessively seeks to have sex, her mother said. The mother filed a formal complaint and sought damages from the hospital and the male patient surnamed Chen (陳) after finding out that her daughter had sex with the man while
BILINGUAL ASSISTANCE: The center launched a chat bot that features Chinese and English interfaces to provide foreigners with instant information about the pandemic The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday said that it would discuss with other nations the possibility of allowing businesspeople to visit on a case-by-case basis. Asked about loosening border restrictions, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said at the daily CECC news briefing that while the center is cautious about opening the nation’s borders, it would aim to diminish obstacles for important trade interactions without risking transmission of the novel coronavirus. Several foreign representatives in Taiwan have expressed an interest in the matter and the center would conduct related negotiations with the help of the
The Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) should not use the government’s disease-prevention policy as an excuse to block people’s access to the Taipei Railway Station’s main hall, the Taiwan International Workers’ Association said yesterday. The association held a protest at the station after what organizers said were about 400 people staged a sit-in on Saturday to demonstrate against the TRA’s proposal to ban sitting on the floor of the main hall. In accordance with the Central Epidemic Command Center’s disease-prevention measures, large gatherings have been banned in the hall since the end of February. After protesters yesterday expressed their grievances at the southern
Nematode-trapping fungi have been found to be natural killers of nematodes and their mechanisms might facilitate the development of new drugs or biological control agents, an Academia Sinica researcher said yesterday. Mostly measuring less than 1mm, nematodes are found in soil worldwide and most are not visible to the naked eye, Academia Sinica Institute of Molecular Biology assistant research fellow Hsueh Yen-ping (薛雁冰) told a news conference in Taipei. Some nematodes can cause infections in humans or damage plants, but existing pesticides, such as ivermectin, aldicarb and levamisole, can only inhibit their activity and the poisons’ efficacy are declining due to
RSS