Something very dodgy has been going on with NHI. Could be incompetence, could be something worse, probably a mixture of the two. Either way a scapegoat is required.
There’s no mystery as to what is going on with the NHI. Issues like how much money is owed by the city governments have been ongoing for years. There have serious efforts at reform and lots of discussion on how to increase revenue and stop debt building up, but rich folks in Taiwan are very powerful and able to control the legislature and force ministers out (it has happened with both the health minister and finance minister in Ma’s administration) and incomes have been stagnant and therefore the ability to increase revenue from the working population has been limited.
Low incomes do have consequences. Of course over use and abuse of the system is also a contributing factor.
I’m currently “suckling at the NHI teet” as a foreigner and am very grateful. Although I pay a pittance for the shite I’m getting looked after I don’t think a case like mine is the drag on the system so much as the public pay-private hospital system is. I’ve had 3 different times where the hospital has insisted I occupy a bed Fri., Sat., and Sun. for an outpatient procedure scheduled on a Monday. Each time I’d suggested that maybe the bed would be better utilized for someone who needed it and every time was threatened with a bump down on the waiting list. And each time I insisted that I be allowed to go home and stay in my own bed with the promise that I would come back on Sunday night to satisfy the rules. They just didn’t have the system in place to deal with a patient who might consider it a waste of resources. Doctors, nurses and administration all told me that is just the way it is and that Taiwanese don’t complain.
So to me it’s either the god-like status of Doctors who fuel the drain through compliant worship from the citizenry or most of these poor slobs who’re working 12 hrs a day 6 days a week consider a hospital stay somewhat of a holiday.
The hospital wants it this way so they can bill the NHi, not the doctors so much. As for Taiwanese they will mainly do as they are told without any questions.