>>55239986>>55240029>>55240139>>55240164To give context, it seems that the Japanese government is planning on scrapping "Health Insurance Cards" as a separate entity and integrating it into the "My Number" system they're trying to create, which will act as a Unique Tax Identification Number for each citizen. They are not going to abolish Health Insurance, but integrate into a National ID system so that there is only a single unique identifier needed. Which, I think many European countries already do with their National ID systems? For the Americans, basically, think your Social Security card mixed with the Real ID system.
The reason there is much controversy around this is less because people are not happy about centralizing their IDs, but because the "My Number" system has been, in the public's view, very accident prone. The "My Number" system is planned to be very integrated with the internet, and as such, issues have occurred. There have been incidents such as benefits being deposited in the wrong accounts with the system, people being assigned the wrong health insurance policy due to things such as data entry errors, as well as information leaks within the "My Number" system.
Much of the controversy is due to the fact that much of Japan's system is stuck in paper record keeping, whereas Kishida is pushing for a rapid increase in the digitization of government data. He has said before how he sees the "My Number" system eventually being integrated into driver's licenses foreign residency cards, etc. The rapid transfers have led to botched implementation of digitization on the local level, or at least, that is what the statement by Kishida's representatives has been.
The other controversial factor is that previously, "My Number" has been a voluntary ID system. In the wake of COVID and the troubles that a FAX-based, paper-based government system caused in effectively responding to the crisis, the government has been pushing to make it far more important, making the voluntary aspect of "My Number" seem less true as time goes on.
TL;DR: It's a controversial move because it essentially makes the Japanese public put their health insurance ID and associated data in the hands of the "My Number" system, which on one hand, increases efficiency, ends the paper stagnation of the government bureaucracy, and centralizes datacenters to provide ease of access for citizens. But on the other hand, it also places lots of trust in a system that has been prone to failures and mistakes in the past, and is vulnerable to cyber-security threats that paper systems are theoretically not vulnerable to.
There is literally no fucking reason I can think of that would cause the CEO of Suntory, a whiskey producing company, would weigh in on an issue like this, so massive PR blunder that's sure to harm a company's numbers, especially in the Japanese economy, where the trend is for younger Japanese to avoid drinking compared to their older generational cohorts.
