Job Discussion Forums

[Black_Beer_Man]

I just got my national health insurance bill for this year and the city of Yokohama has more than doubled my costs. It was 14800 yen a month. Now it's over 33000 yen a month. Yikes!

Anyone out there have private insurance plans? That might be a better deal for me.

Thanks.

[currentaffairs]

Yes, do some research and you can find private insurance that is quite cheap. A colleague recommended a Japanese insurance company and they charged around 30,000 yen for the year. This was about five years ago and the company is Meiji Yasuda. Check for latest up-to-date info.

[milkman]

Be aware that you MUST be enrolled in the national health insurance by LAW. So, you can buy extra private insurance, but cannot leave the national health insurance scheme even if you do buy more.

The health insurance payments are based on previous year's salary, so obviously you made enough money to warrant the payments. Just be glad that your salary is enough to live comfortably and make the payments.

[izmigari]

[Black_Beer_Man]

Can't you save money on health insurance if you move to a cheaper city? I'm in Yokohama, the most brutally taxed city in the Kanto area I am told.

If I move to another city, I think I have to transfer my health insurance plan to theirs which might result in a lower monthly fee for me.

Is that right?

[Black_Beer_Man]

[mitsui]

Yes. When I moved from Sagamihara to Kawasaki, I had to pay more.
Well, if you decide to live out in Ebina or Atsugi, I think you pay less but then you could have a worse commute.
Yokohama is 3.6 million people with a high percentage of people who are elderly.

People who live in Setagaya or Suginami pay even more than you do, I believe.

[Black_Beer_Man]

[victory7]

Black Beer Man - you can't get out of paying into the Jp NHI system unless you want to be hit up for backpayments which makes it worse in the longer run.
Cities can charge you up to 2 years backpayments if you didn't join the NHI (yep, not just 2 yrs backpayments for no Pension/Nenkin enrolment or payments). If you decide to take yourself out of it, you will have to make up those payments at some stage if you decide to keep living in Japan.
Some cities seem to have made new rules to squeeze money from gaijin to cover the holes in the National Health System caused by too many old people and less taxpyers.
I heard of somebody who registered in a Tokyo City for the NHI. He had worked in Japan the year before in a different location and had proof of his income for that previous year.
However, for some reason the people at the City office seemed to think they had the right to base his payments on his income for 2 years. And he was not living or working in Japan for the first of the previous 2 years, he was in his home country. At that time he did not have any gaijin card or Jp residency whatsoever.
The NHI premiums are supposedly based on the previous year's income, not the previous two especially if you are in your home country for the year before last with absolutely no connection to Japan. Personally I think that City were way out of line demanding such private information.
No, he did not have any five year out of the last ten years residency in Japan. It was not the 'Permanent Residence for taxation purposes' rule.
It sounds like Japan is desperate for tax money and will grab it from people with few rights and temporal status as much as they can.
I advise everybody who is not married to a Jp national to plan for their retirement in their home country or a different country that they might have a passport for.
I really enjoy life in Japan but all the posturing about how much it is 'changing' does not convince me at all. It is accommodating some sectors of the population such as those from international marriages but as a veteran of working in Japan, I see a very real stagnation here. Even the limited internationalisation that is taking place in Japan cannot mask the fact that Japan needs a genuine culture shift to change in the real sense.
This won't happen as the overwhelming majority like the comfort of not having to deal with differences in any significant sense and it is understandable given that while multicultural western societies are more dynamic, they also have significant problems in dealing with people whose cultures are very different.
However, whenever I experience western multicultural societies on vacation again, it is clear that no matter what problems there are, this is the future. The future is not closed, xenophobic societies who want to be comfortable with people who look exactly the same and speak the same language, and whose educational systems act to penalise those who cannot easily learn the written language and follow what it is to 'be Japanese'.

[TokyoLiz]

The NHI deduction from my pay is significantly higher than the OP. The rate varies a lot from city to city.

I wrote this in another thread -

Pay the mandatory insurance. One foreigner I know had never paid the national, and when she had a life changing illness, her private insurer refused to pay out. She paid two years of back payments to the national insurance after she got care in hospitals here.

[Black_Beer_Man]

Today I was thinking that the NIH is not actually a health insurance product that you buy. It is in fact a TAX.

It's a tax because your price is decided on your last year's income (just like income tax).

Furthermore, look at travel insurance. Their prices are based on age and risk, not income. That's real insurance.

Calling NIH "insurance" is pretty clever. A positive spin that makes your income tax appear to be lower.

BTW, for kicks, I priced a 30 day medical travel insurance policy to Japan from Blue Cross Canada. I'm in my 40's and it gave me a rate of $163 CAD or 13,295 yen. So, if you're paying more than that, guess what? You're being screwed.

[Rooster.]

Travel insurance works differntly than regular insurance. Are there not time limits to the "traveling"?

[TokyoLiz]

[Maitoshi]

It is definitely a tax, but in terms of actual value in comparison to private insurance, it's very difficult to make broad comparisons to private insurance products.

Those in the low through middling income brackets tend to get very good value in exchange for their level of contribution. Those in the upper income brackets probably don't receive good value for the money paid in unless they are very unhealthy. However, most of us would consider ourselves lucky to be taxed at those rates if it meant that we were doing so much better, in terms of income, than so many others.