Government plans to invalidate health insurance cards for failure of pension premium payment

   The government plans to invalidate the national health insurance cards of about two million insured people on the grounds that these people have failed to pay their national pension premiums despite the fact that they have fully paid their health insurance premiums.

   At a House of Representatives welfare committee meeting on May 16, Japanese Communist Party representative Takahashi Chizuko revealed this.

   The government submitted to the Diet a Social Insurance Agency privatization bill that will also allow municipalities to issue insurance cards with short periods of validity (one month, for example) to replace the regular health insurance cards of the insured people who are in arrears with their payment of pension premiums in order to increase the collection of national pension premiums.

   In reply to Takahashi, a health ministry official confirmed that this scheme could apply to about two million insured people.

   “The government must stop punishing those who may have failed to pay their pension premiums. Invalidation of health insurance cards is an extreme measure that will endanger insured people’s very lives,” said Takahashi.

   Takahashi also criticized some municipalities for employing intimidating methods to increase national health insurance premium collection. She displayed a red payment reminder envelope used by Aizuwakamatsu City (Fukushima Pref.) and a black envelope of a similar letter sent by Nirasaki City (Yamanashi Pref.).

   Welfare Minister Yanagisawa Hakuo agreed with Takahashi, stating, “These are too blatant. They should take other measures to secure premium collections.”

   The JCP representative also cited a case in which bank accounts of a person, who runs a travel agency in Hyogo Prefecture, was impounded after he failed to pay pension premiums for three months. Takahashi stated, “This will only increases the public distrust of the pension system.”   - Akahata, May 17, 2007