A medical tourism conference aiming to launch Taiwan’s plans for medical tourism badly backfired when health professionals protesting that the plans are a profit making exercise ignoring staff shortages and high medical care costs, interrupted the opening ceremony while chanting slogans and holding cardboard signs that read: “Health is not for sale.” Members of healthcare reform groups protested outside the Taipei International Convention Center against the government’s plan to set up profit-making international medical centres in the proposed free economic pilot zones. The World Medical Tourism Congress in Taipei sought to discuss healthcare and showcase Taiwan’s development in medical services. As well as the zones, plans include five international medical service liaison centres at Taiwan’s major airports, all part of a master plan to make Taiwan’s medical services an international brand. Several healthcare reform groups panned the government’s medical tourism plan, saying it was a ploy for favouring big corporations by allowing them to set up profit-making medical centers in the proposed free economic pilot zones. Protest groups from the Doctors’ Working Conditions Reform Task Force, the Taiwan Radical Nurses Union, the Taiwan Healthcare Reform Foundation, Covenants Watch, the Taiwan Association for Victims of Occupational Injuries and the Black Island National Youth Front staged a protest. Ellery Huang of the Doctors’ Working Conditions Reform Task Force explains, “The congress may be branded as an academic seminar, but it is a platform for the Ministry of Health and Welfare to spread its propaganda on international medical centres and the free economic pilot zones.” The protestors argue that the country’s National Health Insurance programme is heavily in debt and healthcare professionals face adverse conditions at work, so medical tourism is a luxury that the country cannot afford. Ellery Huang adds, “We demand that the ministry work to identify the root causes of the nation’s collapsing healthcare system and stop promoting something that seeks only to satisfy the needs of big corporations and overseas patients. We also urge the ministry to invest more resources to improve the employment environment of frontline medical personnel and stop attempting to lure the country’s talent into the for-profit medical centers in the planned pilot zones.” According to the government plan, the proposed international medical centres will primarily provide physical examination services and cosmetic surgery, which will not be covered by National Health Insurance and must be paid by patients out of their own pockets. Taiwanese doctors will be allowed to take on part-time jobs at the centres and work a maximum of 20 hours per week. Chao Meng-chieh of Taiwan Healthcare Reform Foundation highlights major problems in the government’s plan to set up the centers. - A severe shortage of healthcare personnel and the establishment of the centres will only aggravate the problem. - The ministry’s relaxation of hospital regulations for the centers will only make under-the-table irregularities even harder to detect. For many years the main argument against promoting medical tourism came from academic research, but in the last few weeks we have seen governments planning laws to restrict it in Israel and Nigeria and now this unprecedented protest from health professionals at a global medical tourism conference.