Amendments in Health Insurance law have been enacted in the Diet session on May 15th, 2019. Among them, what impacts the most to world talents is addition of requirement to be a resident in Japan for a dependent to be insured. Such requirement has been already in place for some of health insurance unions as their own criteria. After the amendments will be enforced on April 1st, 2020, all of health insurance unions implement this residence requirement for a family member to become an insured dependent.

Backgrounds of this amendment is unfortunately abuse of the cross boarder coverage of dependents. And the government and health insurance unions have realized that it is intrinsically difficult to distinguish real and fraudulent claims for health care taken place outside of Japan. World talents in Japan, who have non-resident dependents of health insurance, should be made a note of this change to be effective within a year.

Link: MHLW Overview of the amendments (Japanese)
Link: Japan Times – News article (English)