Taipei, May 27 (CNA) Taiwan spent more than NT$600 billion (US$25.15 billion) for medical care under its national insurance program in 2014, with dialysis for patients with kidney disease accounting for the biggest share, according to information released Wednesday by the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA).

NHIA official Wang Fu-chung said the country's hospitals reported more than 615 billion points' worth of medical services in 2014, with each point receiving NHIA reimbursement of NT$0.9.

In the category of chronic kidney failure, however, each point was rewarded with only NT$0.82 in NHIA funds because the total spending by all hospitals was way in excess of the budget allocated for that type of treatment, Wang said.

The top 10 areas of spending in 2014 were chronic kidney failure (45.3 billion points), dental diseases (38.9 billion points), diabetes (24.9 billion points), hypertension ( 23.1 billion points), adult acute upper respiratory failure (14.4 billion points), slipped disks and low back pain (13.5 billion points), pneumonia (12.6 billion points), mental diseases (11.9 billion points), and intracerebral hemorrhage (11.8 billion points), in that order, according to Wang.

The list is similar to 2013, except that hypertension and respiratory failure changed places, he said.

One notable change is that spending on diabetes rose 8 percent in 2014, probably because of the increasing number of diabetics, Wang said.

Chiang Chi-gang, a physician at National Taiwan University Hospital, attributed the increase to the availability of new drugs for diabetes.

Noting that there are more than 70,000 people undergoing dialysis in Taiwan, Chiang said 45 percent of them have diabetes, which can lead to kidney failure.

Taiwan has to spend more to treat people with diabetes to prevent them from going into kidney failure, he said.

(By Lung Pei-nin and Maubo Chang)
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