Taiwanese National Health Insurance Card :: Insurance Coverage Taiwan Essays

Taiwanese National Health Insurance Card Taiwanese government has been providing health insurance coverage to all its citizens since 1997. Initially, the National Health Insurance Agency managed and tracked citizen's medical usage via four versions of paper national health insurance card. The health insurance card, the newly born handbook, the pregnancy handbook, and major disease/handicap certificate. Whenever a citizen visits health clinic, the visit is recorded on the back of the appropriate ID. When the card is full, the citizen exchange the used card for a new one at the local NHI office. The NHI also receive medical records from medical establishments when they file for claims. Starting July 2003, the health insurance agency began its modernization process. It started consolidating four paper versions with the digital version-- a smart card containing IC chip. By Jan. 1, 2004, the entire country was upgraded to the digital NHI card. The goal of the modernization process is to reduce the NHI's operational overhead so that more resources may be directed toward medical care. It is expected to save over 42 billion NTD or roughly 1.2 USD over the period of seven years.5 In addition, visits to the health care provider will be more convenient, as patients no longer need to bring multiple ID/handbooks with them to medical facilities. And there will be no need to visit local NHI office for new ID cards. For health care providers, the digital card provides a electronic infrastructure that allows them to streamline the claim filing process avoiding mistakes. It also allow NHI to provide a more efficient collection mechanism to gather accurate information regarding ove rall citizen's health and disease statistics. Despite its well intention and the ambitious plan, the modernization plan has serious ethical consequences. When the modernization process is completed, the NHI will has the most extensive online database of Taiwanese citizens. The database will contain nearly every citizen's medical record for his or her entire life. It will also contain the most up to date personal information such as home and work addresses. Because of the extensive nature of the database, if the database is misused, the consequence will be severe. Furthermore, Several human rights advocacy group has pointed out the infrastructure is insufficient to protect citizens' privacy rights as well as the lack of will on government's side to protect individual's personal information. And there is fear that there is risk that the leaked medical information can be used to persecute a specific segment of the population.