The National Health Insurance Program has been implemented for more than 10 years. According to recent statistics, the public satisfaction rates with the Program have often been above 70%. Nevertheless, the NHI Program is not that successful in terms of other aspects. For example, the medical expenses have exceeded the insurance revenues and therefore created huge deficits. Moreover, it is difficult to raise the NHI contribution rate due to political pressures from the Legislative Yuan and the general public. On the face of the aforementioned problems, the Executive Yuan launched a massive re-planning project from 2001 to 2004 (the so called Phase II NHI Program or P2-NHI), which attempted to thoroughly study the problems encountered by the Program and to propose systematic solutions. This paper is based on a pre-evaluation of the P2-NHI financing scheme with special reference to a comparison of the perceptions and preferences of the NHI elites and the general public. This paper begins with a literature review on pre-evaluation and political feasibility analysis as well as an introduction to the new NHI financing scheme. It is followed by an empirical study on the perceptions and preferences of policy stakeholders toward the reform scheme. A comparison of the views of the general public and the elites was drawn on a telephone survey (n1=1,069) and an elites interview (n2=52) with a semi-structured questionnaire. According to research findings, the general public was not so familiar with the NHI issues in comparison with the elites. Moreover, the general public and the elites had different preferences toward certain issues, such as the share of additional medical expenses among stakeholders and the calculation of premiums based on individuals or households. In conclusion, we identified a big gap of NHI literacy between elites and the general public, as well as their consensus and conflicts towards the reform scheme. These findings could be fed back into the policy making process.