The government's handling of a law for providing various services to physically, intellectually and mentally disabled people will deepen the distrust such people and their families harbor toward the Democratic Party of Japan and the government. The DPJ should remember its election promise to abolish the law, which went into force in 2006.
The law, which is intended to increase self-reliance of disabled people, integrated services for those with physical, intellectual and mental disabilities that until then had been provided separately. But because the law requires such recipients to pay 10 percent of the costs, in principle, the more serious one's disability is, the greater their financial burden becomes. At facilities that provide job training and employment to handicapped people, cases existed in which workers' service costs exceeded their earnings.
Groups of disabled people in various locations filed lawsuits, declaring that the law violates the Constitution, which guarantees the right to maintain the minimum standards of wholesome and cultured living.