Insurance

National Health Insurance

Labor Insurance

National Health Insurance (NHI)

All residents of the ROC are covered under the National Health Insurance program. Based on a risk-sharing model, the program is a type of social insurance system in which each participant is required to pay a monthly insurance premium in return for medical treatment for childbirth, illness, or injury.

The National Health Insurance Law defines the insured as the employees of professional organizations (including both public and private enterprises and institutions) and the employees' dependents. The insuring party, according to the same law, is the institution or employer that employees the insured, or the organization to which the insured belongs.

The formula for calculating premium co-payment rates is as follows:

• The insured should pay an amount equal to their insured wage x 4.55% x 30% x (1 + actual number of dependents)
• Employers should contribute the following amount for each employee: insured wage x 4.55% x 60% x (1 + number of dependents)
• The government is responsible for paying the following amount for each employed person: insured wage x 4.55% x 10% x (1 + number of dependents)

Ratio of fees paid for NHI plan:

• Government 10%
• Employer 60%
• Employee 30%

Source: Bureau of National Health Insurance

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Labor Insurance

The Labor Insurance Act provides insurance coverage to workers in the private sector, including industrial workers, journalists, employees of nonprofit organizations, fishermen, persons receiving vocational training in institutes registered with the government, and members of unions.

Teachers and employees working in government agencies who are not eligible for teachers' or civil servants' insurance are now also covered under this law. As of April 2001, there were about 398,500 insured units, and the number of workers covered by the program had grown to approximately 7.85 million.

Labor Insurance Premiums

Labor insurance coverage consists of two types: ordinary labor insurance, which includes six types of benefits--maternity, injury and sickness, disability, old-age, death, and unemployment; and occupational injury insurance, with four kinds of benefits--injury and sickness, disability, and death. Unemployment benefits, now available to selected categories of insured ROC workers, were incorporated in the labor insurance program in January 1999.

In 2000, the premium rate for ordinary labor insurance was 6.12 percent of the beneficiary's reported monthly insurance salary, which was limited to US$1,345 for the purpose of premium calculations. For insured persons not covered under the unemployment benefits program, the premium rate is 5.5 percent. The responsibility of paying for the premium is generally shared by employees, employers, and the government in the proportion 2:7:1. Occupational injury insurance premiums are paid by employers. The rates differ among the 52 categories of businesses covered, ranging from 0.08 percent to 3 percent of reported wages and averaging 0.34 percent.

Source:

Government Information Office, Bureau of Labor Insurance

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