The Ministry of Health and Welfare yesterday made public 36 suggestions recently put forward by the second-generation National Health Insurance (NHI) program review team, which include allowing non-Taiwanese babies to be covered by the program upon birth, spurring criticism from civic groups.
The suggestions were tendered in April by the review team, which consists of seven specialists brought together by Minister of Health and Welfare Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達) in March last year and is headed by former minister of health Yeh Ching-chuan (葉金川).
The specialists drew up the advice after deliberating in eight plenary and 16 group meetings over the past year on the structure, insurance policy, revenue and spending of the second-generation NHI program, which took effect in January last year.
The suggestions include letting babies born to non-Taiwanese parents in the nation be covered by the NHI program upon birth, rather than six months later, per current rules; using the combined annual incomes of insured individuals to determine their eligibility for exemption from the 2 percent supplementary premium; and increasing the current NT$10 million (US$328,790) cap on the maximum amount of taxable income subject to the supplementary premium.
Currently, a 2 percent supplementary premium is imposed on each income exceeding the monthly minimum wage — NT$19,273 — that an insured individual earns from other jobs.
Earnings from five other sources — rent, interest, stock dividends, professional practice and job bonuses that are more than four times the individual’s monthly salary — would also be subject to the supplementary premium if they are higher than NT$5,000.
Other major suggestions include extending the NHI program to all residents of the nation regardless of their nationality and imposing the same premiums on them, based on the “ability-to-pay” principle.
In response, Chu Tong-kuang (曲同光), director of the ministry’s Department of Social Insurance, said the review team has advised the ministry to also include money won by chance, such as lottery rewards, and income from property sales to the list of earnings subject to the supplementary premium.
As for the inclusion of babies born to non-Taiwanese parents in the program shortly after birth, Chu said that since doing so would require legislative amendments, the ministry would consider the idea for the time being.
The ministry said that, as some of the suggestions could cause widespread effects and thus need deliberation, the proposals are to be discussed at the next stage of NHI program reform.
However, civic groups yesterday criticized the proposals.
Taiwan Healthcare Reform Foundation researcher Shen Pei-han (沈珮涵) said that even if the ministry decided to determine insured people’s eligibility for exemption from the supplementary premium based on the combined annual incomes earned from the above six sources, it would not help assuage long-running contentions that the NHI program was unfair.
“Moreover, that the ministry has repeatedly failed to give serious thought to the root causes of the program’s inequality problems constitutes severe malfeasance,” Shen said.
National Health Insurance Civic Surveillance Alliance spokesperson Eva Teng (滕西華) said some of the advice was in the earliest version of the second-generation NHI program design guidebook, criticizing the advisory report as lacking new ideas and foresight.
“Not only do the suggestions fail to meet the public’s expectation for a truly reformed NHI program, they also do not seem to stand a good chance of being carried out,” Teng said.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
The Civil Aviation Administration yesterday said that it is considering punishments for China Airlines (CAL) and Starlux Airlines for making hard landings and overworking their cabin crew when the nation was hit by Typhoon Kong-rey in October last year. The civil aviation authority launched an investigation after media reported that many airlines were forced to divert their flights to different airports or go around after failing to land when the typhoon affected the nation on Oct. 30 and 31 last year. The agency reviewed 503 flights dispatched by Taiwanese airlines during those two days, as well as weather data, flight hours
A relatively large earthquake may strike within the next two weeks, following a magnitude 5.2 temblor that shook Taitung County this morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. An earthquake struck at 8:18am today 10.2km west of Taitung County Hall in Taitung City at a relatively shallow depth of 6.5km, CWA data showed. The largest intensity of 4 was felt in Taitung and Pingtung counties, which received an alert notice, while areas north of Taichung did not feel any shaking, the CWA said. The earthquake was the result of the collision between the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate, the agency said, adding
Three people have had their citizenship revoked after authorities confirmed that they hold Chinese ID cards, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said yesterday. Two of the three people were featured in a recent video about Beijing’s “united front” tactics by YouTuber Pa Chiung (八炯) and Taiwanese rapper Chen Po-yuan (陳柏源), including Su Shi-en (蘇士恩), who displayed a Chinese ID card in the video, and taekwondo athlete Lee Tung-hsien (李東憲), who mentioned he had obtained a Chinese ID card in a telephone call with Chen, Liang told the council’s weekly news conference. Lee, who reportedly worked in
RSS