Japan Press Weekly

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2013 March 27 - April 2 [WELFARE]

58 died from delay in seeking medical care due to economic reason

A national organization of democratic medical institutions on March 29 released survey results showing that 58 people died last year because their financial problems prevented them from seeing a doctor in time.

Commenting on the survey results at a press conference, the secretary general of the organization said, “This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

The Japan Federation of Democratic Medical Institutions (Min-iren) surveyed its 657 member institutions.

According to the survey, of the 58 deceased, 39 had either a short-term or temporary insurance certificate because their regular insurance cards were invalidated due to failure to pay insurance premiums and 22 did not apply for the national health insurance for financial reasons. They were probably reluctant to receive medical advice for fear of being required to pay the full fee at hospitals.

Most of these people were men aged between 40 and 60, and were either unemployed or were contingent workers.

Min-iren secretary general Nagase Fumio pointed out that the main reason why they have difficulty in paying the premiums and hesitate to apply for the insurance is that the rate of insurance premiums is too high.

The organization plans to urge the government to issue everyone a regular insurance card and instruct all municipalities to not invalidate health insurance cards automatically.


Past related articles:
> 67 died last year from delay in obtaining medical services due to financial difficulties [February 21, 2012]
> 71 died because of lack of money to see a doctor [March 3, 2011]
> 33 people died from delay in seeking medical care [March 12, 2010]