The Right to Health in Taiwan: Implications and Challenges

Abstract

Even though the right to health has been recognized as a fundamental right of everyone in Taiwan and universal National Health Insurance has been established to protect the accessibility of healthcare, the right to health is still not comprehensively guaranteed because the right is not explicitly stipulated in either the judicial or policy-making process. The ignorance then undermines the intrinsic values of the right to health and the importance of the individual’s legal entitlements to health necessities, and excuses the government’s non-compliance with human rights obligations. In order to explore the implications and challenges of the realization of the right to health in Taiwan, this chapter assesses Taiwan’s commitments to the right to health from legal and public health perspectives through an analysis of constitutional and domestic laws, health inequality status, and the distribution of underlying conditions of health. The notions of “accountability” and “participation” in regard to “social determinants of health” are also considered as important factors in the assessment.