Category: Welfare

It was revealed on the 28th through interviews with stakeholders that the Japan Pension Service, which handles the administration of national disability pensions, has been secretly discarding evaluation records and requesting new rulings from different doctors whenever staff members deemed the original doctor’s decision on benefit eligibility to be “problematic.” The Pension Service admitted to this practice during interviews, stating they are “currently investigating the facts, including the number of cases involved.”

The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) has decided on a policy to make an extraordinary revision to disability service fees in June 2026, under which the basic remuneration for newly established providers of four services, including Continuous Employment Support (Type B), will be reduced for fiscal year 2026 only. Existing providers will continue to receive the current basic remuneration.

Japan’s health ministry is planning to introduce a cap, possibly as early as next fiscal year, on the number of “retained workers” that can be counted when calculating additional payments for disability employment support, following allegations of large-scale overpayments in Osaka City. The move comes after three Type A continuous employment support facilities allegedly cycled users through repeated six-month employment periods and reported around 200 retained workers per year—despite each facility having a capacity of only 20 users—resulting in suspected excess subsidies of more than ¥2 billion.