Lai health committee sets goal of raising life expectancy to 82

Taipei, Aug. 23 (CNA) President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) said that the government will work to increase the average lifespan of people living in Taiwan to 82 years of age over eight years, at the first meeting of a committee intended to promote public health.

"Over the next eight years, we aim to increase the average life expectancy of our citizens from 79 to 82 years" and make more of those years healthy, said Lai, according to Presidential Office official Xavier Chang (張惇涵) at a press conference Thursday night.

"At the same time, the child mortality rate should be lowered from 5.3 per thousand to below 4 per thousand," Lai said, according to Chang.

In particular, Lai underscored the importance of improving the current long-term care system and of implementing measures to prevent chronic disease, enhance screening, and strengthen the health of children and Indigenous peoples, Chang said.

Few other details on how lifespans would be extended were offered, however.

Lai's remarks were made at a meeting of the Healthy Taiwan Promotion Committee, one of three ad-hoc groups established recently under the Presidential Office.

Taiwan's average life expectancy was 80.23 years in 2023, with an average life expectancy for men of 76.94 years and for women of 83.74 years, according to Ministry of the Interior data.

Meanwhile, the mortality rate for children under 5 was 5.1 per thousand in 2022, Ministry of Health and Welfare data showed.

That figure is lower than the average for Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) members, which was 6 per thousand in 2022.

But Taiwan has not performed as well as East Asian neighbors South Korea and Japan. In 2022, the child mortality rate was around 3 per thousand in South Korea and 2 per thousand in Japan.

The Executive Yuan in July pledged to allocate approximately NT$13.5 billion (US$422 million) for an updated medical care program targeting pregnant women, newborns and children from fiscal 2025 to 2028, nearly five times the allocation for the current four-year program.

On Thursday, the 35-member health committee also touched on the National Health Insurance (NHI) system, with Lai pledging to continue reforming the system.

Chang said that while the president was open to various possibilities to make the NHI system more financially sustainable, he emphasized the need to keep it accessible to everyone.

Meanwhile, Shih Chung-liang (石崇良), head of the National Health Insurance Administration, acknowledged that due to Taiwan's low birth rate and aging population, the insurance revenue collected in 2023 covered only about 75 percent of total NHI system expenditures.

To bridge the gap, the remaining costs were primarily covered by the government tax revenue, including tobacco taxes, along with additional financial support. He was referring to the injection of NT$24 billion into the system from the government's general budget in 2023.

According to Chang, while several potential measures to alleviate the financial strain on the NHI system were proposed, such as collaborations with private insurance companies or increasing NHI premiums, no conclusion was reached during the four-hour meeting.