In respect to an increasing number of enrollees who dropped out the National Health Insurance (NHI) program due to premium arrears, the Bureau of National Health Insurance enacted a 1-year premium relief program for the economically underprivileged people in 2003. Eligible beneficiaries could apply for either premium waiver or installment according to their economic status. This study aims to analyze the characteristics of program participants using the NHI administration data. The results show that 205,754 individuals or 107,272 households were mainly aged between 15-44, male, unemployed, those who were conventionally excluded from formal social assistance systems. In addition, by analyzing the tax information of sample (5% of households), the results indicate that a majority of the program participants were marginally above the poverty line, and hence, they were not qualified as low-income to be exempted from the NHI premium. Moreover, although this 1-year program had protected this near-poor population's temporary access to care from 2003 to 2004, the outstanding arrears and new premium payments will continue to accumulate after the termination of this relief program. Clearly, they won’t be able to afford such a large financial burden. Therefore, a more generous and long-term premium subsidy policy, instead of a short-term relief program, is critical for the near poor. Besides, the results show that over 10% of sampled households were quite affluent in contrast with the household income of the general population. Therefore, the study suggests that the premium subsidy criteria should be either exclusively income-tested or income-tested in complement to a categorical arrangement for specific population groups.