Just when you think the social insurance system of Japan can’t be much worse than it is, new scandal hit the Social Insurance Agency this time involving its own official. As it turns out SIA official colluded with employers as early as 1995 to make employee income lower that it actually were to get better record on premium-payment rates. According to the official who got caught red-handed this collusion between official and employers is not systemic in SIA, meaning it is only an isolated case. However, another former official at SIA claims that the illegal arrangement is widespread in the agency. Below is an excerpt of the article from Japan Times Online. Oh well, here we go again.

The SIA official instructed a Tokyo-based company in 1995 to lower its employees’ reported incomes. Documents written by the official confirm this took place. Also, the president of the company told an Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry panel investigating pension problems that the SIA official instructed the firm to lower its stated income levels.

The case has prompted the agency to launch an investigation into all 150 million entries in the pension program’s computer system. Pension account holders whose entries are found to have undergone suspicious changes in income levels will be notified, according to the agency.

Just when you thought Todai is the coolest of the cool, the highest of the high, and the most righteous of the righteous in Japanese education, this news will turn up. As it turns out, a team of medical researchers conducted studies on specimens taken from unknowing patients and lied about it on a published medical journals claiming they had consent from the “donors.” Tell me, what else would you expect from the lavishly-funded thinkers of Japan who are given more than enough time to think things over. Well, maybe they just got a bit overexcited with their crusade to save the world. It’s sometimes easy to commit such mistakes - easy to forget that it’s not only our intent that counts in the overall judgement of our actions, the means in which we carry out our intents matters too. This kind of things makes me want to watch Extreme Measures again, and hear Hugh Grant retort, “…Maybe they are doing a great thing for the world. Maybe they are heroes. But they didn’t choose to be. You chose for them. And you can’t do that, because you’re a doctor, and you took an oath…“