All’s well that ends well, or so the government would have us believe now that Department of Health Minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) has decided to stay on in his position a week after tendering his resignation over frustrations facing his National Health Insurance (NHI) reform plans.
Yaung’s change of heart followed a meeting with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Wednesday where the president backed his proposal on increasing premium payments in an attempt to save the financially stricken NHI scheme from collapse.
Speaking after the meeting, Ma applauded the new plan and said the government would work to “make health insurance sustainable in the future.”
How convenient for Ma not to mention that it is largely because of him that the NHI finds itself in such dire straits. His decision as Taipei mayor in 1999 to stop paying Taipei’s subsidies because of a disagreement over jurisdiction means that Taipei currently owes the NHI NT$34.7 billion (US$1.06 billion) — almost two-thirds of the NHI’s total debt of around NT$60 billion.
The government’s decision to back Yaung may have been because ever since his “resignation,” the pan-blue media have been portraying Yaung as a martyr, a man of principle prepared to take a stand on an issue he believes in.
Debate has raged in the press and on TV talk shows about everything from the condition of health insurance in general to the number of elections Taiwan holds.
What certain sections of the media didn’t talk about, however, was why a considerable portion of the working population should have to fork out even more of their hard-earned cash in order to pay for the irresponsible actions of a select few former Taipei City officials — many of whom now occupy key government positions.
They also didn’t talk about why, unlike other cities such as Kaohsiung, Taipei still hasn’t begun paying back the money it owes even though the Supreme Administrative Court ruled against the city in a final verdict more than 12 months ago.
They didn’t talk about why the Control Yuan seems to be worrying about trivial matters like who funded the Dalai Lama’s recent trip to southern Taiwan when instead it could be asking Ma about where all the money the city held back between 1999 and 2002 has gone.
Any responsible politician would surely have put the money to one side so that it could be paid off in the event the dispute was settled in its opponents’ favor.
They also failed to discuss the total lack of remorse shown by the president for the incompetence that put the NHI on the verge of bankruptcy in the first place.
These are the kinds of questions people really want answers to.
Instead of acting like the whole thing never happened, Ma should admit his mistake and push his government to formulate a plan to help the local governments still in arrears pay back what they owe, therefore making health insurance truly sustainable for the future.
To do so would not only save the NHI from fiscal bankruptcy, but would also save this government from moral bankruptcy.
Source: Taipei Times - Editorials 2010/03/19
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