The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Healthcare in Taiwan

I spent some time a few years ago and detailed facts, figures and reports from the NHI about insurance in Taiwan on Wikipedia. It seems not even a remnant of my work is left, but rather a 3 paragraph stub of worthless information on the NHI. Since I do not not want to re-invest that time at the moment, I will stick with superficial information.

As brief overview, National Health Insurance (NHI) is the socialized health care system in Taiwan. It is compulsory for every Taiwanese.

The Good

In the frontier of civilized medicine moderated by large pharmaceutical companies and unethical costs, Taiwan has missed out on a lot. That is not to say their knowledge, equipment or practices are sub-par (quite the contrary actually), but the big money pharmaceutical companies have found little purchase in the heavily regulated and politically controlled industry. The bottom line is that health care in Taiwan is extra-ordinarily cost effective, filled with highly competent doctors, and can provide you the best treatment money can buy anywhere in the world.

The Bad

Because of the low-cost nature doctors are encouraged to use low cost drugs, and try to stick with a small selection of drugs. This means that on the whole, sometimes less effective treatments are provided to save money. This also means that the government stockpiles (not always renewing or maintain these as needed) drugs like Tamiflu and H1N1 vaccinations.

The Ugly

While there are many good aspects to health care, one of the great weaknesses is that there is little effort in time with the doctor and proper diagnoses of a condition. Most doctor visits I have been to are less than 4 minutes and the clinical diagnosis is based primarily on a very brief inspection. The problem is that I have had many very incorrect assessments. I know first-hand people who were treated for cancer that they never had, and children incorrectly diagnosed with life crippling diseases in these brief assessments.

Taken from telegraph.co.uk

Taiwanese doctor rebuked for 84-second diagnoses
A doctor has been rebuked by the Taiwanese government after an investigation revealed that he took just 84 seconds, on average, to diagnose each patient.

Published: 1:12PM BST 20 May 2010

The orthopedist diagnosed 61,366 patients last year, according to an investigation by the Control Yuan.

He diagnosed up to 339 outpatients a day, taking an average of 84 seconds, the investigation showed, triggering a request to the health ministry that he spend more time on his patients in the future.

Local media identified him as Wu Ming-feng of the private Minsheng hospital in south Taiwan's Kaohsiung city, with TV stations showing footage of him defending his work style.

"If the government wants to restrict the daily number of patients, it's OK with me. I don't even want to have so many patients. I just thought it would be unfair not to see them," Mr Wu said on the CTI television channel.

I would like to say congratulations to Dr. Wu for his dedication to his work. I would also like to think that the reason for his clientele is due to repeat visitors. Just because an 84 second diagnoses was made does not mean it was the wrong one. But the trouble lies in the fact that Taiwanese people will not complain if they are incorrectly diagnosed, so we will probably never know if Dr. Wu is a dedicated hard working professional or a dedicated hard working person who had little care for the end result of his work.