Stop me if you've heard this one. A bunch of elderly people are sitting in the waiting room of a doctor's office, catching up on neighborhood gossip and their own health woes. As Mrs. Sato goes on about her lumbago, Mr. Kobayashi interrupts. "Where's Suzuki-san?" he says. "He's usually here by now." Everyone looks around and confirms that Mr. Suzuki is indeed not there. "I guess he's sick today," says Mrs. Sato.
This is obviously the image of old people that the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare had when it devised the new health-insurance system for persons 75 years of age or older, a system launched so carelessly that the ministry has yet to come up with an English name for it. Local governments who administer it have had to improvise. Soka City in Saitama calls it by the unwieldy term Health Insurance System of Later Term Elderly People Medical Treatment, while Onojo City in Fukuoka simply uses Senior Medical Insurance.
The confusion is understandable since the ministry has even changed the Japanese name. Originally it was called Koki Koreisha Iryo, meaning "late-term senior medical service," a phrase that conjured up a depressing vision of old people in their last throes. It has since been changed to Choju Iryo Seido, which can be translated as "medical service for happy seniors who live long, fruitful lives," or something like that.