Some 41% of municipal leaders in Japan want the central government to delay plans to scrap health insurance cards and merge their functionality with the beleaguered My Number identification cards by fall 2024, a Kyodo News survey showed Tuesday.
The results come following a spate of personal data security errors in the My Number system. Issues have included cases of people's health insurance data being mistakenly registered to others, and public welfare payments being assigned to bank accounts belonging to other people.
Despite awareness of issues involving the system, a law to scrap the existing health insurance cards and effectively make the use of My Number cards mandatory was enacted in early June.