Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2016 August 17 - 23 [POLITICS]

Abe gov’t aims to further weaken social security programs

Following the Upper House election in July, the Abe government is aiming to worsen the social security programs all at once. Particularly in health and nursing-care services, the government plans to force increased financial burdens and reduced benefits on all generations.

As for medical services, under the pretext of “intergenerational equity”, the Abe administration intends to increase the amount that patients aged 75 or over have to pay at medical institutions from the current 10% of medical costs to 20%. Meanwhile, the amount that patients aged between 70 and 74 have to pay at hospitals is now being doubled to 20% in phases.

The government plan will inhibit elderly patients on low-fixed incomes from seeing a doctor and thus aggravate their health conditions. As a result, the government’s medical spending will go up.

As people get older, their medical expenses increase while their incomes decline. The Japan Medical Association (JMA) is opposed to the announced plan, noting that the amount of pensions provided to the elderly is “not sufficient”.

The welfare authorities are also considering removing from the list of drugs covered by health insurance new medications and drugs similar to over-the-counter ones such as vitamin compounds. This will cause serious damage to patients who need to take many kinds of medicines, especially old people.

In addition, the government has a plan to require inpatients in general wards to pay for utility charges. If this is introduced, together with the charge for meals which was raised this April, the amount of hospital expenses will rise by 1,700 yen a day or 51,000 yen a month.

In the field of nursing care, the government is poised to exclude day-care and visiting services for those whose conditions are relatively “mild” from the list of services covered by nursing-care insurance. The authorities are also taking into consideration collecting money from those who use care providers’ equipment such as wheelchairs and invalid beds.

As of August 17, 22 out of all 47 prefectural assemblies in the country adopted statements urging the central government to continue to cover the cost of renting required equipment with nursing-care insurance. The statement approved by the Mie Prefectural Assembly pointed out, “Such a change to the fee-paying service will lead to worsening users’ conditions and consequently increase the government’s nursing-care costs.”

The Abe administration also sees as a problem some prefectures’ “high rates” of certification of recipients of nursing-care services and is set to instruct those prefectures to reduce the number of recipients. The JMA condemns the national government, saying, “It is improper to spread nationwide the method of evaluation used by the local governments where the certification rate is lowest.”

Past related article:
> Eating habits and social life of people on welfare becoming poorer [July 20, 2016]