A System Supported by Users #LongTermCareInsuranceSystem

So, can I ask you something?

How much did it cost to get admitted?

I see...

And... what about the monthly costs?

Books that depict aging

Come to think of it, I have read many books about nursing care. The first one I picked up was in my early twenties; it was a raw and honest depiction of human aging in Sawako Ariyoshi's The Twilight Years.

William Wharton's 'Late Autumn' (1990, Shinchosha Bunko) is perhaps the work that remains in my heart among them. A son who usually lives apart from his parents traces the memories of days gone by and depicts the figure of his parent who has grown completely old.

I am not good at clingy relationships with people, and that son is also someone who prefers a life like mine. He visits the house where his parents live for the first time in a long while, discovers a side of his parent he never knew, and feels conflicted about the insurmountable relationship lying between the couple. Even so, amidst the irritation and despair, a pleasant word from his father or a nostalgic family memory suddenly comes back, and it is a work that saves my heart as a reader as well.

And the last one I read was Mariko Hayashi's 'Our Paradise' (2016, Mainichi Shimbun Publishing). However, this one depicted the messy human relationships I dislike so much that I gave up reading it halfway through.

Home nursing care

I wonder when it started. When I began helping with my grandmother's care at my parents' house. The one who was caring for that grandmother was my mother, the daughter-in-law.

My grandmother, who slept in the brightest room in the house, would call my name many times a day. Each time, while I was annoyed that everything in my day was being interrupted, I would go to my grandmother's bedside and ask what she needed.

Even if I pretended not to hear my grandmother's voice calling me, I eventually couldn't stand it anymore. And among my siblings, only my name came to be called.

One day, my mother cried out loud in the kitchen.

Had she been told something by a relative who visited from time to time? Even now, that high-pitched, screaming cry of my mother from that day, which I only heard once, remains in my ears.

Inheritance from my wife

Her mother came to live with us. No matter how much the Civil Code changed after the war, my mother lived among people who continued to hold onto pre-war values.

It is not just my mother's fault.

Even if it was her husband, asking about money must have been vulgar to her. Let alone inheritance. I had heard that my father had made preparations, but my mother could do nothing with what my father left behind after he passed away just a month later, and she was stripped of all the assets he had set aside for her old age.

And so, my mother came to our house with nothing but the clothes on her back.

Living with her, I remembered that book, “Our Paradise”. The setting was Tokyo, I believe, and it described the reality of nursing homes in painstaking detail. It stated that it cost tens of millions of yen to enter a care facility, with monthly fees equivalent to the average monthly income of a man, and that there were even higher and lower options.

That is why, when I have tea with friends who are also caregivers, I sometimes find myself wanting to ask: How much did it cost to get in? What are the monthly fees?

My mother's care expenses and our household budget are separate things. That is why I am curious.

Long-term Care Insurance System

For me, long-term care meant a bedridden grandmother. Having assumed that only such people were eligible for long-term care, I never imagined my mother would become eligible. But now, my mother has been certified as requiring Long-term Care Level 1 several times.

With a disability in her legs, my mother cannot go anywhere alone, nor can she stand in the kitchen. And once this certification was granted, my mother became able to receive various services.

If it had been my father, who was a large man, I might have given up on home care. But knowing that this system could be used for my petite mother, the anxiety about the future of living with her was largely removed from the day I found out.

I believe this country's system has liberated Japanese women from the home.

Without this system, I might have had to endure the days of caregiving alone, just like that day when my mother cried out in a high-pitched, screaming voice.

Features of the system

A system that moved care, which had been borne by women for free, out into the public sphere, this is wonderful.

Just as my mother cried that day, in a closed world, someone ends up enduring and enduring, and that goes unnoticed.

Unless care is opened up to the outside, both the caregiver and the care recipient will instantly become the vulnerable side.

Every system has its flaws, but I believe this system reflects the voices of women. Many people are involved on both the receiving and providing sides of the service. Care managers, community comprehensive support centers, welfare officials at the municipal office. Doctors at hospitals, too.

I think it is a very well-made system.

Conclusion

This country is running increasingly short of workers. That is why the government is calling on women to work as well. And the number of male caregivers has also been increasing.

If that is the case, those who have been paying long-term care insurance premiums should actively use these services.

If the number of such people does not increase, this system will wither away.

In Western societies, they have used women from abroad as care workers. But this country brought it out into the world as a profession.

It is a system that is kind to women.

That is precisely why I believe we must protect this system.

* Thank you for reading until the end.

* I also talk about this on Stand.fm.