## Direction of reform in specific areas (2)

## Pension systems

—Toward the creation of new pension systems—

## ■ Framework of new pension systems

○ Earning-based pensions (social insurance): Everyone joins the same system regardless of their type of job, resulting in the same premium and same benefit if earnings are the same

○ Minimum guaranteed pension (financed by tax): clear indication of minimum guaranteed old age benefits

## ■ Improvement of current systems

☐ Efforts to be made in improving the current systems in accordance with the direction of the new pension system

• The systems should not affect people's choice of work and life style (for example wider applicability of employees' pension)

• Unification of employees' pension

• Improvement of minimum guarantee function

• Burden in accordance with capacity

• Ensuring sustainability of pension financing

## ■ Operation of pension systems

• Improvement in the operations that support the public pension systems

## Poverty and disparities —Establishment of a multi-layered safety net—

## ■ Assistance for self-support with enhancement of the 'safety net for the working generation'

• Improving the employment situation is of the highest priority. Stabilization of the financial infrastructure of employment insurance

• Establishment of a support system for job seekers (including reconsideration of sources of finance)

• Comprehensive promotion of the 'secondary layer of the safety net', including housing allowances and loans of comprehensive support funds for the unemployed

• Employment assistance for anyone receiving public assistance and housing allowances as well as single mothers, being based on agreements between municipalities and Public Employment Security Offices

## ■ Enhancement of infrastructures of mutual assistance in communities

• Consistent and accompanying support such as livelihood support and employment assistance (support for establishment of dedicated organizations that provide organic coordination between social resources and comprehensive consultations, with municipalities taking the leadership role)

## ■ Reconsideration of public assistance as the 'final layer of the safety net'

• Enhanced support and improved menus for self-support and employment assistance for anyone being provided with public assistance but having earning capacity

• Prevention of children being impacted by poverty (for example consultations on child rearing and employment and educational assistance within their community)

• Thorough measures against dishonest receipt (optimization of medical assistance and exclusion of any 'poverty businesses')

• Verification of criteria for public assistance based on objective data

## ☑ Verification of effectiveness of measures

• Development of multiple objective indicators in order to identify the reality of any poverty and disparities in a consistently comprehensive manner

$ ^{※} $ Responses to the Great East Japan Earthquake

• Appropriate initial and long-term responses in preventing any of the weak from being even more impoverished due to the disaster, which could then lead to fixed disparities

## Measures against low-incomes —Compensation for fluctuations in social insurance and enhancement of the income redistribution functions—

## [Co-payment]

## ■ Consideration to introducing a total aggregation system (tentative name)

○ Imposing an upper limit for the total amount of co-payments with regard to medical, nursing, child, and disability care, and tracking the overall household economy rather than individual systems

☐ Detailed setting for anyone with a low income, for example limiting co-payments to a fixed proportion of annual incomes, and after taking basic expenditure into account

☐ Introduction of the system will be based on the assumption that the infrastructure for informational cooperation such as the 'numbering system relating to social security and tax' will be developed, and which will have wider applicability after 2015

## ■ Reconsideration of the reimbursement system for high cost medical care

The upper limit of co-payments for general working earners with lower incomes will be reconsidered

Setting an annual upper limit for co-payments will be considered for the purpose of easing the burden of high medical costs over a long period of time

○ Improved payment procedures (payment in kind for outpatients)

$ ^{※} $ Fiscal neutrality on the basis of payment costs, while avoiding any increases in insurance premiums due to increased payments

## [Insurance premiums]

■ Enhanced measures for anyone with a low income with respect to National Health Insurance and Long-Term Care Insurance

■ Wider application of employees’ pension and health insurance to include non-regular workers [Housing]

## ■ Consideration for an enhanced mechanism for use in supporting housing

Measures to support housing, which typically varies depending on the applicable social security benefits, will be considered from the point of view of establishing and developing 'safety housing net'.

## Recommendations for the resurgence from the Great East Japan Earthquake

## ■ Construction of 'new town planning' and a 'new network of social securities' as an

advanced model for Japan's aging society with a declining birthrate for use in the future, and not limited to restoration or recovery of the status quo of before the disaster occurred

Presentation of a 'new peaceful community model' through a resurgence in the stricken areas

• Inclusion of a 'comprehensive community-based care system' into 'new town planning'

• Model cases for the networking of medical institutions, cooperation between medical and nursing care, and inter-community cooperation

Sources of finance required for implementation of measures for persons with disabilities and reformation of social security

## ■ Ensuring stable sources of the finance required for the health and welfare of persons with disabilities

O'Act on Comprehensive Welfare for Persons with Disabilities' (tentative name) is being discussed by the study group for reformation of systems for persons with disabilities with the purpose of providing support without gaps between systems, and with the aim of submission to the Diet in 2012 and enforcement by August 2013

## ■ Consideration of sources of social security finance based on fiscal sustainability

Efforts in accordance with the road map, and with the aim of achieving it simultaneously with sound public finance in the light of combined reforms with tax, as well as taking account of the relationship to the route to resurgence from the disaster