As the WHO asserts, “Spending on health is an investment which underpins the quality of life, happiness and prosperity”. As such, the Importance of investing in health goes far beyond healthcare in that it is closely interconnected with socio-economic development, productivity, labor supply, tax revenues, biomedical innovation and overall national competitiveness.

The ECCT and eight other associations have co-organized the “Increasing investment in health to strengthen national competitiveness” summit and jointly signed the “2023 Taipei Declaration on Healthcare” which called on the government to achieve an increase in healthcare spending from 6% to over 8% of GDP by 2028. Such an increase would bring the level of healthcare spending in line with other advanced economies and help accelerate Taiwan’s potential to become a global leader in healthcare and biomedical innovation.

Boon Huey Ee, board of director and co-chair of Healthcare Sustainability was invited to give a talk at the summit on the theme “sustainable investment in health for a resilient future” where she shared the key recommendations from the committee’s 2023 position paper on this topic, namely to:

• Commission a joint private-public project to quantify the value of investment in health in Taiwan. This would help to establish a benchmark for setting health policies, enable informed and evidence-based policymaking, and generate the momentum for change in the government as well as in society.

• Establish an “Investment in Health Taskforce” under the Executive Yuan to undertake a whole-of-government approach to redirect public / private financing to health modelled on the “International Economic and Trade Taskforce” that brings together all relevant agencies and the private sector to discuss and redesign health-related tax policies, investment incentives, and explore other potential revenue streams.