Angry Japanese Elderly People
“It is NOT literally the later term care. It means that the government wants us to die sooner!”
This is what elderly people aged 75 or over think of ‘the Later Term Elderly Medical Treatment’: the new Japanese health care system for elderly people, which came into effect in April.
About Later Term Elderly Medical Treatment
Under the new system, every elderly person aged 75 or over has to have their own health care insurance. This means that elderly people whose health care insurance was covered by their children or relatives have to pay for medical insurance on their own.
Starting the New System with Concerns and Confusion
The roll-out of the new health care system has generated serious concern among elderly people who receive only a small pension. In addition to the current nursing care insurance fee, they have to pay an insurance fee of around 10,000 yen a month, regardless of whether they go to the doctor or not. Unlike younger Japanese people, elderly people aged 75 or over cannot find a job to cover the cost of insurance.
Current Pains for the Elderly, and Future Worries for Other Japanese People
Some elderly people have thought that this was just a bad dream. In fact, early in April many elderly people cued in front of ATMs to check whether the government had deducted the insurance fee from their account. Unfortunately, the cold, hard reality is that they did. The deduction from their bank accounts for insurance was confirmed.
Such elderly people’s problems cause younger Japanese people to worry about their future – the longer they live, the harder their life will become. Furthermore, recent incidents such as mistakes in pension records and scandals about embezzlements by government officers make elderly people furious about what the government does. “We will not go to the doctor anymore.” An elderly gentleman said on a television program. “The Later Term Medical Treatment? Huh! We want to terminate the medical treatment.”
May 03 2008 11:06 am | Health Care and Weekly Articles
