Taiwanese Health Care

I like the health care system they have in Taiwan. It's universal and both doctors and patients like it. It used to be fee-for-service, but then doctors were abusing the system by over-prescribing stuff. To avoid losing all their money, the Taiwanese government switched over to a global budget in 2002.

The think I like most about the Taiwanese health care system is that everyone is given a smart card that has all the medical history on it, and you make payments using the card, too. I'm pretty sure it looks exactly like this one:

The great thing about the smart card (besides not having to transfer medical records from one doctor to another) is that it cuts out all of the middle men and all the paper work. They have the lowest health care administration costs in the world: less than 2 percent of the total health care costs.

And they only spend about 6 percent of their GDP on health care. Compare that to the United State's 16 percent. Sweet.

You can find out more by Googling it. Hahaha. I love using "let me Google that for you."