Political Forum - View Single Post - How 5 Capitalist Democracies actually tackle health care

DanteAugustusGermanicus · #4 (**permalink**) 06-19-2008, 07:56 AM

here are the program's results for the Taiwan:

TAIWAN

Quote:

Percentage GDP spent on health care: 6.3

Average family premium: $650 per year for a family for four.

Co-payments: 20 percent of the cost of drugs, up to $6.50; up to $7 for outpatient care; $1.80 for dental and traditional Chinese medicine. There are exemptions for major diseases, childbirth, preventive services, and for the poor, veterans, and children.

What is it? Taiwan adopted a "National Health Insurance" model in 1995 after studying other countries' systems. Like Japan and Germany, all citizens must have insurance, but there is only one, government-run insurer. Working people pay premiums split with their employers; others pay flat rates with government help; and some groups, like the poor and veterans, are fully subsidized. The resulting system is similar to Canada's -- and the U.S. Medicare program.

How does it work? Taiwan's new health system extended insurance to the 40 percent of the population that lacked it while actually decreasing the growth of health care spending. The Taiwanese can see any doctor without a referral. Every citizen has a smart card, which is used to store his or her medical history and bill the national insurer. The system also helps public health officials monitor standards and effect policy changes nationwide. Thanks to this use of technology and the country's single insurer, Taiwan's health care system has the lowest administrative costs in the world.

What are the concerns? Like Japan, Taiwan's system is not taking in enough money to cover the medical care it provides. The problem is compounded by politics, because it is up to Taiwan's parliament to approve an increase in insurance premiums, which it has only done once since the program was enacted.

an interview with...Husband-and-wife health policy experts Reinhardt and Cheng (who is referred to as May Reinhardt at times in this interview) are based at Princeton University, where he is the James Madison Professor of Political Economy and she is a co-founder of the annual Princeton Conference on health policy. Here they discuss the U.S. health care system's problems and analyze other countries' approaches, including that of Cheng's native Taiwan, which studied health systems around the world before reforming its own. This an edited transcript of an interview conducted Nov. 10, 2007.