Still amounts to a meaningless drop in the ocean for the people collecting the fees though, and a feeling of being skinned for those who have to take the test. NT$8000 is a lot of money even for people on expat packages. That’s a couple of weeks’ groceries for the average family, I reckon.
I get the distinct impression they’re doing it purely to get the message across: you will do as you’re told, you’ll pay what you’re told, and you’ll count yourself lucky you’re not being treated worse.
There’s a lot of profits to share out amongst certain parties with prices like that.
I really doubt it 
I suspect budgeting may be currently be an issue, and who better to help ameliorate all these costs?
Those cops had only received one jab of AZ. That’s ridiculous. First responders in Taipei should have had the second jab by now.
Condolescenes to the Irish man and his family too.
RIP
The price has been different from the beginning of the self-pay PCR test, and some must have complained about it. MOHW lowered the minimum price hospitals should charge for the test, iiuc.
It just doesn’t make any sense, though, from that point of view. There are 800,000 foreigners here, the majority of whom are not earning inflated salaries and/or cannot leave; so of those, very few of them are likely to want COVID tests (the main reason being travel requirements).
I didn’t see a single foreigner in the queue when I went for a (mandatory) test, but let’s say 15,000 of them are going to want to fly in the next three months: that’s an extra NT$20m or so extracted from foreign pockets, over and above the ~NT$10 billion that will be charged to citizens over the same period (Taiwan has 480 hospitals, each doing maybe 50 tests a day). You could achieve the same net result by just charging everybody the same flat rate and increasing the price by, um, about NT$10.
There seems to be no plausible financial reason for this. They’re doing it because they can: the Constitution gives no guarantee of equal treatment under the law to non-citizens.
With that typical “Where are you from? When you come back?” attitude, these foreigners are probably just seen as leaving forever, so why not to milk them a bit for the last time.
A lot of them probably are leaving forever. I’m seriously considering moving on myself, as soon as I can figure out where to move on to (given that the whole planet is in a similar state).
I don’t disagree with your overall point, but I’m not sure about your maths here - it seems to be assuming that the NHI rate for PCR tests is the same as the self-paid/daylight robbery rate, and/or that the majority of tests each day are being done under the latter scheme rather than out of medical necessity, neither of which I think is the case?
Ah, fair point. I was forgetting a lot of the people in the queue are having mandatory tests covered by NHI (the same is true for foreigners, btw, so there’s that).
Yeah, I was talking about this with my dad last night. If only there were someplace to go. 
Sure, I just meant this is apriori for those making such rules.
It’s 50-50 whether I’ll have a job this year, so my half-baked plan is to head back to Blighty, grow a scary-ass beard, and start up a rhubarb farm. Maybe I can write some misanthropic books in my spare time.
They may make an extra $100,000nt a month across all hospitals from this policy. Will that really make an impact on budgets? When they are giving families $10,000nt for each child which is costing millions of nt?
I don’t follow your logic.
It’s not really complicated. The medical system here has long been stretched and cash strapped. What do you think is happening now? You don’t understand that they might want more money? What’s your alternate explanation? The idea that it is a deliberate affront is laughable, so I hope that’s not it.
Umm. What!
I think you need to look around and see how Taiwan views outsiders.
Look at the current situation with SEA workers.
How is the medical system in Taiwan cash strapped? A few thousand NT extra per hospital is not going to matter.
In other news, seems there is some discussion regarding opening some night markets, especially in the Wanhua area.
Just remembered, home test kits are now available. Has anyone purchased/used one yet?
So am I although I’ve been saying it for well…Forever.
But I’m seriously peeved at the treatment of foreigners this year. The only reason I didn’t move on is family and the shitshow overseas…And my crypto imploding somewhat just before the pandemic broke out. That was a bad week or two.