🏥 Health Insurance Cabinet Order: comments open

❓ What is changing?

On August 7, 2026, Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) opened a public comment period, under the Administrative Procedure Act, on a draft Cabinet Order to adjust related orders in line with the partial enforcement of the Act Partially Amending the Health Insurance Act and Other Acts. The case number is 495260131, the category is "social insurance," and the responsible office is the Medical Affairs Division, Health Insurance Bureau, MHLW. Comments are accepted from 23:30 on August 7, 2026 until 23:59 on September 6, 2026. A Cabinet Order (seirei) is the instrument by which the Cabinet fills in the detailed standards and procedures that a statute delegates to it. Here, the amending Act has already been enacted, and this draft bundles the consequential adjustments to the related Cabinet Orders that must take effect together with the part of the Act now being brought into force. The listed legal bases span Article 115(2) of the Health Insurance Act, Article 83(2) of the Mariners' Insurance Act, Articles 46, 53(4) and 57-2(2) of the National Health Insurance Act, Articles 76(7), 82(5) and (7), 84(2) and 104(2) of the Act on Assurance of Medical Care for Elderly People, Article 60-2(2) of the National Public Officers Mutual Aid Association Act, Article 62-2(2) of the Local Public Officers Mutual Aid Association Act, and Articles 17(1) and 22 of the Act on Remuneration of Ministry of Defense Personnel. That list shows the adjustment reaches across virtually every public medical insurance scheme in Japan. The concrete text is published as PDFs ("draft order" and "outline") on the e-Gov case page.

👥 Who is affected?

• ●Foreign employees enrolled in employees' health insurance (Kyokai Kenpo or a company health insurance society)
• ●Foreign residents in municipal National Health Insurance — students, self-employed and freelancers
• ●People covered by Mariners' Insurance, national/local public officers' mutual aid, or Ministry of Defense personnel benefits
• ●Foreign residents in the Late-stage Elderly Medical Care system (generally age 75+)
• ●Anyone who wants to submit an opinion on the draft (accepted until 23:59 on Sept 6, 2026)

🌏 Impact on foreign residents

Foreign residents in Japan are, as a rule, enrolled in one of the public medical insurance schemes — employees' health insurance through their employer, or municipal National Health Insurance. Because this draft adjusts Cabinet Orders across health insurance, mariners' insurance, national health insurance, elderly medical care and the mutual aid schemes, there is a good chance your own scheme is within its scope. That said, this is still a draft: enrollees have nothing to file right now. The comment procedure runs under the Administrative Procedure Act, and the submission method and required entries are set out in the "call for comments" document. To prevent misfiled submissions, e-Gov requires you to confirm that you have read the call for comments and the draft order in full before submitting. The materials are published in Japanese only, so a translation tool plus your municipality's multilingual consultation desk makes them far easier to work through. Short-stay tourists are not eligible for Japan's public medical insurance and are therefore not directly affected.