Problems
Even with all their success in their health care system, Taiwan has suffered some misfortunes. The government is not taking in enough money to cover the services it provides, so it is borrowing money from banks. The revenue base is capped so it does not keep pace with the increase in national income. Premiums are regulated by politicians and they are afraid to raise premiums because of voters. The country is slow at adopting technology except for drugs. There is a low doctor-to-population ratio resulting in too many patients depending on too few doctors. Patients visit the doctor more frequently causing doctors to keep visits short to about 2 to 5 minutes per patient. There is no system to regulate systematic reporting of clinical performance, patient outcomes and adverse events.
Read more about this topic: Health In Taiwan
Famous quotes containing the word problems:
“We are all adult learners. Most of us have learned a good deal more out of school than in it. We have learned from our families, our work, our friends. We have learned from problems resolved and tasks achieved but also from mistakes confronted and illusions unmasked. . . . Some of what we have learned is trivial: some has changed our lives forever.”
—Laurent A. Daloz (20th century)
“I conceive that the leading characteristic of the nineteenth century has been the rapid growth of the scientific spirit, the consequent application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems with which the human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of traditional beliefs which have proved their incompetence to bear such investigation.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“She has problems with separation; he has trouble with unity—problems that make themselves felt in our relationships with our children just as they do in our relations with each other. She pulls for connection; he pushes for separateness. She tends to feel shut out; he tends to feel overwhelmed and intruded upon. It’s one of the reasons why she turns so eagerly to children—especially when they’re very young.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)