Lower house passes hepatitis bill, enactment seen certain

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TOKYO, Nov. 26 Kyodo -
The House of Representatives passed a measure to support hepatitis patients at
its plenary gathering on Thursday, advancing the lawmaker-sponsored bill to the
House of Councillors, where its passage is seen as certain due to support among
both the ruling and opposition camps.
The lower house also passed a bill on compensating the sufferers of
side-effects from swine flu vaccines and bills to lower the salaries of
national civil servants, bringing the total of government-sponsored bills that
have cleared the chamber in the current Diet session to nine.
With only days left until the end of the extraordinary session next Monday, it
appears increasingly difficult for legislation to be enacted on freezing the
sale of shares in state-owned Japan Post Holdings Co. and its banking and
insurance units.
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan and its two junior
coalition partners, the Social Democratic Party and the People's New Party,
agreed later Thursday to extend the 36-day session to early next month,
possibly Dec. 9, to enable the key legislation to be enacted, lawmakers said.
After finalizing the margin of the extension, the ruling bloc plans to make the
proposal to the opposition at a meeting of the Diet affairs chiefs of both
camps on Monday morning.
The DPJ planned to file with lower house Speaker Takahiro Yokomichi for an
extension on Friday, but it eventually decided not to do so, DPJ lawmakers
said.
The hepatitis bill, which will be put to an upper house vote Monday, stipulates
support for hepatitis patients, including hepatitis C sufferers who contracted
the disease through tainted blood products and hepatitis B patients who were
infected via syringes repeatedly used in vaccination drives.
Referring to the state's responsibility for the spread of hepatitis, the
measure calls for the central and local governments to take necessary steps to
reduce the economic burden on the patients so they can undergo treatment.
It also requires the health, labor and welfare minister to compile guidelines
for hepatitis prevention initiatives and health delivery systems for the
disease.
Later Thursday, the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party resumed boycotting
Diet proceedings, arguing more time is needed for deliberations. The opposition
camp had boycotted Diet proceedings for several days until Tuesday after the
ruling bloc, based on its overwhelming strength, got a debt repayment measure
through the lower house last week.
The LDP has demanded a one-on-one question-and-answer session between Hatoyama
and LDP President Sadakazu Tanigaki, and intensive discussions by the lower
house Budget Committee about a political donation scandal swirling around
Hatoyama.
With the ruling bloc set to extend the extraordinary session, the Diet is
likely to see the enactment of legislation on establishing a fund for atomic
bomb survivors during the session.
Both the ruling and opposition camps are expected to vote for the measure,
which is aimed at ending the legal battle waged by those who demanded to be
recognized as suffering from radiation-related illnesses.
With respect to the hepatitis bill, both ruling and opposition parties had
tried to improve the way hepatitis patients were being dealt with since the
time of the previous LDP-led government.
The then ruling LDP and the New Komeito party submitted a bill stipulating
comprehensive measures to the Diet, while the DPJ and three other parties
submitted another on subsidizing patients for their medical expenses.
But the bills were scrapped when the lower house was dissolved in July for a
general election. The election, held in late August, resulted in the end of
over 50 years of almost continuous LDP rule and bringing the DPJ to power for
the first time.
The current parliamentary session is the first legislative session for the
DPJ-led coalition government.
==Kyodo