Frontline healthcare workers should be on the National Health Insurance Committee, the Taiwan Medical Alliance for Labor Justice and Patient Safety said yesterday, urging the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) to include them.
The fifth list of committee members was released on Friday last week, consisting of 39 members from four groups: representatives of “the insured,” “healthcare service providers,” “government officials” and “specialists and trusted third parties.”
Alliance director-general Lin Ping-hung (林秉鴻) said that although half of the committee members are new to the list, it continued to exclude healthcare workers, so decisions are made by a “tripartite agreement” of the government, healthcare facility management and people who have National Health Insurance coverage.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
“If frontline healthcare workers are not included in the National Health Insurance Committee, the sweat and blood situation of healthcare labor will not improve,” Taiwan Anesthesia Union chairman Chu Ning-wei (儲寧瑋) said.
The naming of committee members is done following the National Health Insurance Act (全民健保法), but the “healthcare service providers” are all top officials of hospital associations or medical superintendents, so “management” is represented, but workers are not, Chu said.
As academics are not on the front line, sometimes they cannot feel the pain of a tough work situation, so they might propose impractical policies, Lin said.
The NHIA must include at least one representative of frontline healthcare workers on the committee, Lin said.
Alliance director Tseng Chia-lin (曾家琳) said that the committee is responsible for allocating nearly NT$800 billion (US$28.1 billion), or about what the government collects each year in income tax, but it is not monitored by the Legislative Yuan and its members only have to be approved by the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
The act must be amended to require committee members to be nominated by the premier and approved by legislators, Tseng said, adding that they should also be required to declare conflicts of interest and properties.
Moreover, meetings should be open to the public, she said.
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