The National Health Insurance Administration has begun to partially cover chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy, benefiting 100 people diagnosed with certain types of leukemia or lymphoma every year, it said yesterday.
The provisional expansion, which is set to increase National Health Insurance (NHI) costs by NT$800 million (US$24.71 million) annually, took effect on Wednesday, agency Director-General Shih Chung-liang (石崇良) said.
The policy marked CAR-T therapy as the first cellular therapy to be covered by the NHI, he said.
Photo: CNA
CAR-T therapy utilizes the transplantation of genetically modified T-cells to treat some types of cancer, including acute lymphoblastic leukemia and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.
Drugs utilized for the therapy were formerly a self-paid medication that cost patients up to NT$13 million per year, a sum NHI coverage has reduced to NT$8.19 million per year, Shih said, adding that drugs cost NT$15 million per year for patients in the US.
Coverage for the drugs is tentative and its continuation would depend on CAR-T therapy’s observed effectiveness in the real world, the agency said, adding that a total of four types of cancer drugs currently fall under provisional insurance coverage.
The NHI currently covers the use of Kymriah in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, said Lee Chih-cheng (李啟誠), an oncologist at Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital.
This type of cancer drug is being prescribed at National Taiwan University Hospital and its cancer center; Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital; China Medical University Hospital and its cancer center; Taichung Veterans General Hospital; and Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital, he said.
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia mainly affects children between three and five years of age, with recurrence in 15 percent to 20 percent of patients, said Huang Wei-han (黃威翰), another oncologist at Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital.
Patients with a recurrence of this type of cancer report a survival rate of 30 percent to 50 percent after five years, he said.
Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma is a cancer mainly affecting elderly people, and the disease has a 50 percent recurrence rate in adults, Huang said, adding that patients with a recurrence report a 10 percent survival rate after five years.
CAR-T therapy achieves complete response in 62 percent of acute lymphoblastic leukemia patients and 40 percent of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma patients, said Hematology Society of Taiwan secretary-general Huang Tai-chung (黃泰中).
The therapy could sometimes achieve these results with just one round of treatment, he added.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
RSS