Japan Press Weekly

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2016 February 24 - March 1 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Murder of elderly requiring nursing care caused by poor social policy: expert

The murder of persons requiring nursing care, which is often committed by exhausted family members, has become a serious social problem. Regarding this issue, Akahata recently interviewed Ritsumeikan University Professor Shibata Hideaki. The following is an excerpt of his interview:

The number of cases in which a person killed or attempted to kill his/her family member in need of nursing care amounts to 373 between 2007 and 2014. This figure is equivalent to 46 cases a year, almost one a week. During the eight years, 2,272 people committed suicide or murder-suicide from the stress of looking after their elderly kin members. The number of workers who quit their jobs to take care of their aged parents has been hovering around 100,000 a year.

The public nursing-care insurance system was introduced in April 2000 under the name of “socialization of nursing”. Actually, the system was designed on the assumption that elderly people would receive care within the family. In fact, more than half of 6.15 million people in the country who were certified as requiring nursing care are using home care services.

The public nursing-care program sets a ceiling on the amount of services provided to users according to the level of care required. If people use care services beyond the fixed upper limit, charges for the use, which are ordinarily set at 10% of the total cost, will jump to 100%. For instance, when a worker whose parent is suffering from dementia used day-care facilities six days a week, the total amount of fees exceeded 100,000 yen a month.

The current public nursing-care system includes no measures to lower the charges for the use of services. So, about 20% of those certified as in need of nursing care refrain from receiving services. Meanwhile, 520,000 people are on waiting lists to enter homes for elderly people requiring special care. An increasing number of unscrupulous care providers are aiming to prey upon them.

Successive governments have curtailed nursing-care services and increased the financial burdens on the general public. They have reduced state subsidies for care providers, which has further worsened care workers’ working conditions and led to an acute labor shortage.

The Abe administration is preparing a bill to exclude persons certified as requiring “low-level” nursing care from those covered by the public insurance program. If those recipients are unable to receive proper care, their conditions will deteriorate and consequently the amount of insurance benefits to be paid will increase. In contrast to Tokyo, the German and South Korean governments have recently implemented measures to expand the coverage of their nursing-care insurance programs to those with mild symptoms.

Instead of increasing the military budget to help munitions companies make large profits, the Abe administration should allocate more taxpayer money for social security.