On February 1, 2018, Chen Shih-chung, minister of Health and Welfare, presented the Second Grade Medal for Professionalism in Health and Welfare to Ms. Cheng Tsung-mei, a health policy research analyst at Princeton University, USA, and the First Grade Medal for Professionalism in Health and Welfare to Dr. Uwe Ernst Reinhardt, a late professor at Princeton University. The medals were awarded in recognition of their contributions to the establishment of the National Health Insurance (NHI) system in Taiwan and the improved international visibility of the country.

Ms. Cheng and her husband, the late Professor Reinhardt at Princeton University (who was a former White House advisor and member of the Science and Technology Advisory Group of the Executive Yuan due to his outstanding achievements in medical economics), had maintained a frequent presence in international conferences and published many influential academic papers on the health insurance systems of different countries over the years. They also published a number of articles about the NHI system of Taiwan in international newspapers and magazines, in which they acclaimed our success in implementing a beneficial and administratively efficient health insurance system nationwide and recommended other countries to learn from our experience.

The coverage of our NHI system on well-known international media channels, such as American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and Cable News Network (CNN), was mostly provided by Ms. Cheng. In 2009, she published an article titled “Lessons From Taiwan’s Universal National Health Insurance” in Health Affairs. The article contains an interview with Yeh Ching-chuan, the founding CEO of the Bureau of National Health Insurance, which prompted him to be invited to appear before the United States Senate to introduce the merits of Taiwan’s NHI system in 2014. Yeh then became the first former official from Taiwan to testify at a United States Senate hearing. This proves that the health care network in Taiwan is in line with the standards of developed countries all over the world and has been recognized internationally.

To acknowledge the efforts of Ms. Cheng over the years in helping to promote the success of Taiwan in health insurance, to establish the NHI model of Taiwan as a benchmark, and to attract other countries to actively learn from us, as well as to recognize her enormous contributions to the improvement of Taiwan’s international image and exposure on the international stage, the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) presented the Second Grade Medal for Professionalism in Health and Welfare to Ms. Cheng and the First Grade Medal for Professionalism in Health and Welfare to Dr. Reinhardt. Certificates of appreciation were also awarded in the name of the MOHW in appreciation of their remarkable achievements over the years.