Current regulations that require people who have returned to Taiwan either briefly or have cut short trips overseas to pay National Health Insurance (NHI) premiums are unconstitutional, the Constitutional Court ruled on Friday, as such regulations needed a stronger legal basis given the importance of the issue.
The case originated with a Taiwanese woman surnamed Lee (?) who has been living overseas since 2002 but has been unhappy at being overbilled by the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) for NHI premiums each year since 2015 for the brief period when she is in Taiwan to spend the Lunar New Year holiday with her father.
Under the Enforcement Rules of National Health Insurance Act drafted by the NHIA, people who have left the country for six months or more are required to reactivate their NHI plan and pay the premium for the period during which they are in the country.
In 2012, the NHIA put into effect an amendment to the enforcement rules, which stipulates that returnees who have reactivated their NHI plan must not suspend the plan within three months of restarting it.
After Lee ignored the NHIA’s repeated orders that she resume her NHI plan, the agency has sent her bills since 2015 for NHI premiums.
As a result, Lee then took the matter to court by filing an administrative suit with the Taipei District Court, which ruled against her, after which she filed with the Taipei High Administrative Court.
After the latter court also ruled against her, Lee filed for a constitutional interpretation of her case in 2020.
In her complaint, Lee said that the amendment waived the requirement for resumption of the NHI plan only for diplomats and their families, but not for ordinary people, which she said contravened the principle of proportionality.
Furthermore, the provision that people like her must wait at least three months before they are allowed to suspend their NHI plans again ignored their rights and interests, she stated.
The Constitutional Court proclaimed that rules pertaining to the resumption and suspension of NHI plans were unconstitutional on the grounds that the issue is a matter of importance, but there is an absence of legal language justifying such rules in the National Health Insurance Act, which should provide legal basis for the enforcement rules.
The current regulations demanding minimum premium payments of three months from returnees, therefore, contravene the principle of legal reservation, which requires there to be a specific legal basis for a regulation on an important issue, the court’s verdict stated.
The verdict also applied to another provision in the enforcement rules, which stipulates that people who had planned to leave the country for at least six months and suspended their NHI shall have the suspensions voided if they return earlier than intended, and pay back the premiums for the period in which they were overseas.
While the issues defined in these rules are not unconstitutional and do not contravene the principle of proportionality, they should have been introduced through legislation rather than be set by the agency itself, the verdict stated.
Therefore, if the relevant agencies believe that those rules should be retained, they should seek to have them introduced through legislation, it stated.
The relevant authorities have two years to make any necessary corrections, it stated.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel