The Moral Foundations of Health Sector Solidarity in Taiwan

People's supportive attitudes towards the publicly funded health system are crucial for ensuring the system's sustainability through crises and maintaining its core functions of funding and providing health services for all. In the literature, this supportive attitude is considered a form of health sector solidarity. Existing explanations for health sector solidarity focus on individuals' feedback to the health system-such as satisfaction and performance evaluation-but pay scant attention to the moral judgements underlying this solidaristic attitude. This study aims to investigate the moral foundations of health sector solidarity in Taiwan. Using the Taiwan Society Political and Moral Values Survey 2025 data, the study examines the relationships between health sector solidarity and moral foundations. The findings indicate that, after controlling for respondents' socio-demographic characteristics and health system-related attitudes, solidarity is positively associated with beliefs in mutual assistance, reciprocity, the human right to health, and self-interest, and negatively associated with meritocracy. National sentiment is not significantly associated with health sector solidarity. By including the moral foundations, this study provides a more comprehensive examination of the factors influencing health sector solidarity in Taiwan and informs future health reform agendas.