On July 7, while Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) was campaigning for the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential primary, he proposed a social welfare insurance policy to ensure that physically and mentally challenged people would have some form of accident or life insurance.
The Financial Supervisory Commission said that the issue of disabled people being refused by insurance companies does not exist.
The following day, it issued a clarification, stating that insurance companies cannot turn down physically and mentally disabled applicants without cause, adding that any breach is punishable by law.
One wonders what the actual situation is.
Take people who have had poliomyelitis for instance: Those who have experienced the disease’s minor aftereffects can still apply for insurance after a thorough medical examination, but an accident caused by their disability would be excluded from the contract.
This means that a person with polio who falls from their wheelchair cannot claim insurance. Such a policy is meaningless to physically challenged people.
For people who have had severe polio, accident insurance is refused, while extra fees are charged for life insurance or catastrophic illness insurance, if they are not rejected outright.
People with other types of physical disabilities face similar problems, which explains the low proportion of physically disabled people covered by insurance.
People with mental illness face an even worse situation: Those with depression, schizophrenia, delusional disorder or bipolar disorder are rejected by insurance companies. So people with a mental illnesses are not covered and cannot claim any insurance if an accident occurs, even if they are not experiencing symptoms.
Article 7 of the Regulations Governing Business Solicitation, Policy Underwriting and Claim Adjusting of Insurance Enterprises (保險業招攬及核保理賠辦法) stipulates that insurance enterprises are prohibited from “treating an insured unfairly because of his or her disability,” and the commission has also made it clear that insurance companies cannot, without cause, refuse to respond to a disabled person’s inquiries about business solicitation or underwriting procedures.
However, the law does not prohibit insurance companies from refusing to underwrite a policy when the physical conditions of the disabled person fail to meet their underwriting requirements.
The purpose of insurance is to diversify risk and share it among people to achieve social stability, but the insurance industry somehow disregards this, and companies frequently refuse to underwrite a policy for people who they regard as “high risk.”
Moreover, insurance products are quite expensive. Take whole-life and medical insurance for instance: The total premium paid to the company is almost the amount of an approved claim.
This is tantamount to handing money over to the insurance company.
When insurance firms are driven by profit and unwilling to be socially responsible, disregarding fairness and justice, the government should take on that responsibility and launch insurance for physically and mentally disabled people.
Otherwise, if a family’s economic situation becomes untenable because of an accident, the situation might result in suicide or filicide, and then society would have to pay an even greater price.
Yang Chun-chieh is an insurance solicitor.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not