JAPAN: Expert panel calls on government to raise social security spending

TOKYO (The Japan Times - Kyodo News), June 14, 2008: The government must expand the financial resources for overall social security services to cope with problems that include a serious shortage of doctors and an increasing number of workers in unstable positions, a panel of reform experts recommended. A report drafted Thursday by the National Commission on Social Security does not elaborate on any particular measures for increasing fiscal revenues. Any measures would require the government to revise laws, but it remains unclear if such amendments can be realized in the current divided Diet, where opposition parties control the House of Councilors. In the report, the governmental commission defines it as "a major challenge" for the state to raise revenue sources for the medical and nursing-care fields, pressing it to carry out drastic streamlining and restructuring and to secure human resources and materials to meet increasing demand. It also urged the government to adjust the allocation of financial resources within the health-care and nursing-care services and review the current fee structures in medical institutions and nursing homes. To maintain the public pension system, which growing numbers of people are refusing to join or pay premiums for, the commission proposes such measures as enabling more part-time workers to apply for corporate pensions, exempting low-income workers from pension premiums and extending the period of retroactive payments. As for the collection system, the commission looks at both a pension system financed entirely from tax revenues and also the continuation of the existing insurance premium-based system. The commission wants the government to take serious financial steps to address the falling fertility rate at a time when second-generation baby boomers are in their mid-30s, warning that failure to take sufficient measures in the past has contributed to a further decline. The commission also said Japan's expenditures on family support is remarkably small compared with that in European countries. (C) The Japan Times