Ruling parties railroad medical insurance bill through house committee

Ignoring 26 million opposition signatures, the ruling parties (including the Liberal Democratic and Komei parties) on June 14 railroaded the bill for an adverse revision of the medical insurance system through a House of Representatives committee.

Opposition parties, including the Japanese Communist Party, raised strong protest against the outrage. In a joint meeting held later in the Diet Building, opposition lawmakers agreed to jointly call for the bill to be discarded. Such a unilateral vote cannot be accepted, they insisted in a joint statement.

The bill, if enacted, will require salaried workers to pay 30% of their medical charges instead of the present 20%, and force the public, under the long depression, to bear a total of 1.5 trillion yen more in medical expenses a year.

Ichida Tadayoshi, JCP Secretariat head, on the same day told the press that such arbitrary Diet management will bring tremendous harm to the people's health and their living conditions, as well as to the economy. The JCP can never allow such an atrocity. To get the bill scrapped, the JCP will do its utmost to stop extending the Diet session, Ichida stressed.

Protest actions continued the whole day around the Diet Building. A total of 1,500 people, including those from the Central Council for Promotion of Social Security, the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo), and the National Federation of Construction workers' Unions (Zen ken soren), heard the committee meeting, carried out petitions, sit-ins, and other street actions.

They blamed the ruling parties for having held no central public hearing and ignoring the strong indignation toward the bill expressed in local public hearings. They also denounced the Komei Party for breaking its electioneering promise that it will oppose an increase in medical charges. (end)