Interesting letter to editor from Taiwanese living in USA about medical care comparing Taiwan and USA
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Good point about the low tax. I always wonder how low-tax Asian countries have a functional public healthcare system. Like in Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Taiwan.
On paper, at least. The line about only 84% is covered for long-term care is concerning.
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You know NHI isn’t exactly tax funded, it’s funded from the premiums everyone has to pay. But I am sure tax is used to make up any shortfall. Still I think most Americans rather pay the mandatory premiums than having to sell everything to cover medical costs, or use gofundme to cover it.
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Americans, for the most part, are brainwashed on healthcare. They don’t think it’s possible to have a functioning single payer system that doesn’t end up costing more than their current system. Even though all they have to do is to look at at the tens of other countries around the world that did just that.
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I would assume that refers to assisted living facilities or similar. I think those are never (fully) paid by a health insurance.
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IMO they do it with some fairly obvious measures:
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Focus heavily on medical conditions which are (a) common and (b) have straightforward, well-understood treatments that are highly effective. In other words they get the maximum bang for their buck. If you have some weird problem, or need something expensive, you’d better have backup insurance.
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Make people pay at least a token amount when they need treatment. This screens out the timewasters, the hypochondriacs, and the people who just don’t look after themselves who clutter up the entirely-free health systems of (for example) the UK.
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Keep the system simple and efficient. While some might characterize Taiwan’s health service as rather rough-and-ready, the byzantine bureaucratic structures that some other countries impose upon healthcare just don’t do anything useful - all they do is hike up the cost of provision.
There really isn’t any underlying reason why medical care (for routine problems at least) should be prohibitively expensive. The US is an outlier because they’ve constructed the worst possible solution.
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In contrast the American system is messed up, because they are going bankrupt on things that are common and have straightforward treatment. For example people dying because they can’t afford insulin.
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One thing I dislike about Taiwan’s medical care is that nurses do not tend to patients’ non-medical needs, such as feeding, bathing, changing diapers, etc. So either a family member has to be the caregiver, or a professional has to be hired. Both options are very expensive.
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It is possible as we know from Taiwan. But is it for Americans where over 40% now are obese? I seem to remember health issues related to being overweight is more than 50% of the medical costs in the US. This is the part that would concern me if I had to pay into a system with everyone else. I will almost certainly get the short end of the stick here.
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That’s true, but IIRC it’s possible to “rent” a staff member to help if it’s required. Again, I think this falls under the category of getting people to pay a token amount for services rendered, and maximizing efficiency. Back in the day when my mum was a nurse, she was responsible for handing out meals as well as all the other stuff; apparently it wasn’t overly taxing, but it cut into their own breaks, leaving them little time to sit down and eat.
When I was in hospital a few months back the nurses were actually very helpful - far more so than you’d expect from the equivalent back in Blighty.
Even in the UK, the NHS admits that obesity and diet-related illness accounts for 25%ish of their annual budget. It’s complete madness, but nobody seems to want to face up to the elephant in the room.
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Not to mention you got girls on ticktok telling other girls how to get a free nose job or boob job through the NHS.
I would love a national health care with people that are relatively healthy and not as entitled. Who wouldn’t?
The letter is basically just an impression marking of the Taiwan health system by someone who does not live here and pay NHI. Another starry eyed Taiwanese patriot abroad…
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People make jokes about the National Sickness Service, and that’s exactly what it is. Part of the fault for the high obesity rate lies with the NHS, who hand out diet advice that’s guaranteed to make people fat and ill. Then they hand out pills and surgery to “fix” the problem they caused. It’s about the same in the US.
Plenty of experts have argued that the primary aim of any Health Service should be to keep people healthy in the first instance; to avoid, as far as possible, people ending up requiring care or medication. Nobody takes any notice.
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Americans are brainwashed about a lot of other things like abortion.
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The subsidy is income based. One of my parents is in a long term care facility, and we do not qualify for any subsidies at all.
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Americans often cite those rare disease as an example of why their healthcare system is superior. Thing is, most people don’t get rare brain cancers or whatever, but millions of Americans die because they can’t afford treatment for common disease that are well understood and have excellent low cost options available. But because profit is often the goal Americans are stuck with paying for the most expensive treatment options for common illness, that they can’t afford.
Don’t worry about rare diseases when people are dying from common ones.
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Pretty much. The government indoctrination of making sure people get fat and sick started at school. You teach them food corporation funded research like the food pyramid and tell moms to pack a snack (something that no one should eat daily as a snack) because kids need to eat them or they can’t function.
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It’s all about profit. I think the system could care less about individual health.
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This is the explicit advice from the NHS too. Perhaps it’s one of them conspiracy thingies?
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Parents in the UK seem particularly ill equipped with dietary knowledge. Typical meal I see moms feed kids : chicken nuggets, some chips, and mushy peas.
Sad 
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