The health ministry said Thursday that work to allow the use of My Number social security and taxation identification cards as public health insurance cards was unfinished for some 770,000 people across the country for whom the process was underway.
The latest discovery came after the revelation of a string of cases in which people were unable to use their My Number cards as health insurance cards at medical institutions.
The ministry has called on health insurance groups and other organizations in charge of linking My Number cards and health insurance information to notify affected people and accelerate work to complete the linkages. It hopes to fix the problem by the end of November.
On Thursday, health minister Katsunobu Kato met with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to report the issue. Kishida instructed Kato to take swift response measures.
The health ministry plans to send a notice shortly to health insurance groups and others to urge them to strengthen efforts to resolve the issue.
Recently, it came to light that the Japan Health Insurance Association for small business employees and their families had not finished work to link the My Number cards of some 360,000 people with their health insurance data as of the end of July. The delays were attributed to applicants' and companies' failures to submit My Number information to the association. In response to the discovery, the health ministry surveyed health insurance groups and others and found that such linkages were unfinished for some 770,000 people, including the Japan Health Insurance Association cases.
Kishida's government plans to abolish the existing health insurance cards in autumn 2024 to integrate them into My Number cards. But many problems over the My Number system have been revealed, including over 8,000 cases in which personal data was mistakenly linked to My Number cards of other people.