Health insurance benefits and coverage options

Health Insurance Benefits

Before we approach the division between the public and private sectors and see how employee health benefits manifest themselves in each of these sectors, we should point out from the very beginning that 96% of the Taiwanese population now benefit from health care and medical benefits, as compared to only 55% in 1995, when a health insurance system at a national level was established in order to cope with the changing demographics and social conditions of the island. The move towards a system of health insurance that would cover the largest part of the island's population was thus made. Previous to that, the physicians were paid a fee for their services and, in general, given their relationship with the different pharmaceutical companies, this encouraged overprescribing of drugs.

Previous to the adoption of the universal health insurance program, referred to as the National Health Insurance Program (NHI), three different social and health insurance systems were available, producing around 10 different health insurance programs. The problem with these different health insurance systems was that it left a lot of the population unprotected and only the public sector, notably government employees, benefited for health insurance programs for their dependants as well as for themselves. The categories left uninsured included school age children and the retired.

Currently, contributions to the Bureau of National Health Insurance (BNHI), which administers the National Health Insurance, are made by employees of both the public and private sectors, by they differ in the amount provided by the employee himself, the government or the employer. As such, according to different sources, the employee in the private sector will pay 30% of the health insurance premium, with the government covering 10% and the employee covering 60%. On the other hand, in the case of a governmental employee, the contribution is split between the government (60%) and the employee himself, who covers 40%. If the individual is self-employed, he covers the full amount of the insurance premium contribution. Different social categories, such as veterans, are covered the full amount by the government. In the case of the employees working in private schools, the proportions are the same with the employees working in the public sectors.

Some of the other benefits of the NHI include the fact that contributions are payroll - related and, of course, as previously mentioned, the fact that the contributions are shared between the three main actors: the employer, the employee and the government. If we look at the proportions we have previously described, it seems that working in the private sector is more beneficial from this point-of-view, since the employee will only contribute with 30%. However, we should also mention that this should be related to the level of salaries in the public and private sectors.