October 1 was the start, not a rehearsal. Anyone 18 or older with a Taiwan National Health Insurance card can earn 健康幣 — health tokens — for a short list of things the government already pays for. The adult preventive checkup, hepatitis B and C screening, publicly funded cancer screening, and the flu, COVID-19, and pneumococcal shots. Logging into the token section of the NHI app for the first time is 200 tokens. A lifestyle questionnaire is 100. A flu shot is 450, a COVID-19 shot 900, the adult checkup 800. Screenings run higher, up to 1,350 when a positive test is followed up. Nothing dated before October 1 is paid.
There is no separate form. The clinic uploads the visit. Vaccine tokens have been appearing in about two days. Checkups and cancer screens take longer, often about two months, and the ministry has said three months is the outside. The balance sits in the NHI Express app — 全民健保行動快易通 — inside the health passbook, under 健康幣. Spending them is a second app, Health GO, which asks for an identity check. The points are yours alone. They do not move to a spouse or a child.
December 1 is the first day they can be used. The minimum is 1,000 tokens. The Ministry of Health and Welfare has said the opening rate is one token to one New Taiwan dollar, as a discount, not as cash. The first doors it named are convenience stores and supermarkets, community pharmacies, ministry hospitals, gyms, and a handful of insurers. What is actually on the shelf was still being posted through October. Each token lasts two years from the day it arrives.
For a foreigner the test is the card, not the passport. Eighteen, and on NHI. The apps are Chinese first. That is the friction. If a shot does not show after a few days, open the health passbook and see whether the clinic uploaded it before you assume the token failed. Do the login and the questionnaire this month if you have not. Those 300 tokens do not need an appointment, and December will not hold a place for people who start on the 1st.