Senior citizens begin 4-day sit-in for burden alleviation

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Senior citizens begin 4-day sit-in for burden alleviation

Senior citizens over 60 years old, including an 88-year-old man, on December 18 began staging a 4-day sit-in near the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare building, calling for reductions in elderly people's burden for medical bills, national health insurance premiums, and taxes.

In addition to increases in nursing-care insurance and national health insurance premiums, cutbacks in the nursing-care insurance program and an increase in the residential tax that the government forcibly carried out this year have dealt a heavy blow to the elderly.

Participants submitted a written demand to the ministry calling for a reduction in medical expenses and an expansion of exemption from the national health insurance and the nursing-care insurance premiums as well as from user fees.

Kashiwagi Fumiyo, 80 years old, had used a motorized bed that cost her 400 yen a month because she has difficulty in sitting up and lying down. Since the nursing-care insurance program was adversely revised this year, she has to use a rental bed that costs her 4,000 yen a month.

Japanese Communist Party House of Councilors member Koike Akira encouraged the participants at the rally, saying, "Let's work together to stop the policy of imposing heavier burdens on the public under the pretext of financial difficulties, while the government provides large corporations with more benefits." - Akahata, December 19, 2006