9/18/2012

Secretive attitudes of the administrative agencies

I have watched a TV program on the Apollo 13. It was impressive that the control crew at NASA has published what was going on in real time after the crisis happened those days. It is a real contrast to TEPCO and the administrative agencies in Japan which have hidden the most infos on the nuclear power plant accident. They won't disclose everything yet. They are trying to handle everything in the closed circle.

I have recently received a bill to pay to a local government. It was for the services to a couple of patients whom we used to make before closing my office this spring. In Japan, the most medical services are paid by the public insurances. One of the insurances insisted me to pay back the money due to a reason not disclosed to me. Inquiring them about the reason, they reluctantly answered that the patients had changed their insurances from one to another. I asked them who had been responsible for that. At first, the patients should have shown the new insurance cards to us in their visits. and the insurers themselves should have told them to do so after asking them to send back the old insurance cards. We were not responsible for that at all. I have been doing with those administrative agencies in this way for the past 17 years while I worked for own practice. That was enough for me. They seem not to let us know it but just to have us rely on them.

My experiences were small troubles compared with that in the nuclear power plant. But we have rights to know what goes on there and rights and responsibilities to comment on what they and we should do for this crisis. The secretive attitudes toward us of the administrative agencies and the power line company is not allowed.  It seems they would like to have things go toward the way they want to. Disclosure is quite important to get our approval for their policy.

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