Japan Press Weekly

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2012 July 11 - 17 TOP3 [WELFARE]

Social security services system will be demolished

A bill on the social security services system submitted jointly by the Democratic, Liberal Democratic, and Komei parties is aiming to build a “high pay, low return” Japan.

The three parties deleted from the bill the phrase “maintenance of universal healthcare”, which will effectively demolish the existing social services system.

Past governments have boasted that their notion of public insurance coverage is equally applicable for all people to receive necessary medical services.

The DPJ-LPD-Komei alliance, instead, incorporated “optimization” of the coverage of healthcare insurance benefits into the bill. Advanced medical care and treatments for mild health conditions such as colds will be provided at patients’ own expense, inviting a situation that one may lose access to necessary treatment despite holding a proper insurance card.

The bill negates the established philosophy which has accepted socialization of nursing care and which helped improve nursing care, and seeks “optimization” of the coverage of nursing-care insurance benefits.

The bill also specifies future social security services costs as subject to limitations.

As its final aim, the bill calls for “a balance between benefits and burdens”.

Article 25 of the Japanese Constitution, the right to life, obliges the government to provide its people with benefits when necessary, irrespective of the size of premiums they have paid.

Akahata states that the government should collect tax revenues based on taxpayers’ ability to pay and redistribute the national income, not transform the existing idea of public insurance, which is now separating individuals’ share from their benefits, into private one.

The bill points to the consumption tax as a main source of financing social services programs. In other words, they will be kept within the limits of consumption tax revenues or the rate of the tax will be further increased.

The government estimates that its social services spending will reach about 61 trillion yen in 2025. If financing programs only with consumption tax revenues, the country will have to impose a consumption tax rate of nearly 25%.

Denmark allocates about twice as much as its value-added tax revenues for social security. Germany uses public funds, which amounts to 1.5 times more than VAT revenues, to fund social services programs.

Akahata concludes that Japan should also allot such key taxes as income tax and corporate taxes to social security.