Now in its 26th year, the National Health Insurance (NHI) is facing challenges including an aging population, rising expenditures and financial strain, improving the system’s financial viability has become one of its top priorities. Hope Foundation for Cancer Care (HOPE) Chairman Wang Cheng-hsu said that the foundation has been advocating for higher caps on copayments as a way to ease financial strain on the NHI and urged for more resources to be allocated towards improving access for new drugs. Citing a survey on NHI reform conducted in 2020, HOPE said that 61.3 percent of respondents are in favor of higher caps on new drug copayments.
Chairman Wang pointed out that with no solution to the perennial new drug budget shortage, which has left substantial financial burdens on catastrophically ill patients. He called for the government to uphold NHI’s original intent to provide care for patients by continuing to increase budget for new drugs and to accelerate the review of new drugs as well as implement patient groups’ recommendations on raising the cap on copayments. The measures will encourage the public to conserve the NHI’s finite resources, ease financial strain on the system and allow for more reasonable allocation of health care resources.
At present, Taiwan's health insurance system for copayment for clinics and medical centers ranges from NT$50 to $420 while catastrophically ill patients have copayments waived. Chairman Wang said that copayments should be returned to a fixed rate system of the NHI and that the copayments policies for catastrophic ill patients should be updated so that charges are based on the patient’s wealth instead of the type of disease.
[2021-10-6/ETtoday]
