Taro Kono, the minister for digital transformation, announced plans Oct. 13 to scrap the current health insurance card system in autumn 2024 and integrate its functions into the Individual Number Card, more commonly known as the “My Number” identity card.

That is tantamount to taking health insurance cards, which are indispensable for daily life, “hostage” as a means to compel the public to acquire My Number cards.

Despite the gravity of the policy shift, the government has not offered a convincing explanation to the public. It also remains unclear what discussions were held within the government over the matter.

Such shoddy handling of the issue will further undermine public confidence in the My Number card system. The policy statement should be reconsidered.

An optional system for allowing My Number cards to double as health insurance certificates went into full-scale operation last autumn.

The government, however, has so far explained that acquisition of My Number cards is optional and those without one will be allowed to continue using their traditional health insurance cards.

The law also provides that My Number cards are issued upon request from individuals, which means their acquisition should not be compulsory.

The government said, in its “Big-Boned Policy” in June, that it will seek in the future to abolish health insurance cards in principle, but the document, formally known as the Basic Policy on Economic and Fiscal Management and Reform, also stated that “an insurance card will be issued if the policyholder applies for one.”

Government officials have also told the Diet they do not intend to compel the public to use the My Number card.

How come the government has changed its stance so drastically?

Perceptible in the backdrop of the policy shift, which is simply slipshod and rough, is the government’s impatience to achieve its target of forcing the My Number Card system on the public.

More than six years have passed since the cards began to be issued, but deep-rooted skepticism remains among the public, who say, for example, that they see no advantage in, or need for, using the cards and fear possible information leakage and abuse.

The government should have confronted these fears and provided a thorough explanation. But as things turned out, the government became so intent on dangling incentives and applying pressure to prompt more people to acquire the cards, that the reason for the cards being issued in the first place seems to have been largely forgotten.

The government has set aside an enormous budget to grant “points,” usable to pay for shopping and other purposes, to those who have acquired My Number cards. It has also indicated that My Number card issuance rates will be reflected in the amounts of local allocation taxes to be received by individual local governments.

Only about 50 percent of the population has obtained a My Number card despite the government’s desperate use of a carrot-and-stick policy. The situation is a far cry from the government target of having practically all members of the public acquire the cards by the end of the current fiscal year.

Kono has stated, quite correctly, that granting points was an “improper” approach.

If he truly believes that to be the case, he should show remorse over, and retract, the existing policy and return to the proper approach of explaining the advantages of, and dispelling concerns about, use of the cards.

The way Kono is resorting to an even more heavy-handed approach leaves us dumbfounded.

The use of My Number cards as health insurance certificates allows doctors and other medical workers to refer, with the consent of patients, the results of past medical checkups and information on drugs prescribed to them. It also comes with the advantage of obviating the need for policyholders to renew their health insurance cards when they switch jobs.

All those benefits, however, are premised on the understanding and agreement of the users.

It should not be forgotten that high-handed imposition of My Number cards will only strengthen the public’s sense of rejection toward them and distrust of the government.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 15