Do the different colors of the Japanese health insurance card depend on one's income level? No, that's not true: The purpose of having different colors for the health insurance card is not to classify people based on income, but rather to show the type of health insurance that people have.
The claim first appeared on TikTok (archived here) by @user1840881173401 (archived here) on February 19, 2024. In the video, the narrator dissects the different colors of the Japanese health insurance card, claiming that the color depends on how much you earn (translated from Japanese to English by Lead Stories staff):
Did you know? Your health insurance card reveals your income and your job. Blue or orange represents small to medium-sized companies. Red means [you work for] a large company. Yellow is for government workers, and other colors like purple or grey are for self-employed people.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Feb 22 18:37:01 2024 UTC)
While it is true that some colors of the Japanese National Health Insurance card reflect what type of company you work for, if you're in the civil service it has nothing to do with how much you earn. The blue insurance card is not issued to those who work in small to medium-sized companies but is the standard color for the social insurance card (archived here). Similarly, the red insurance card is not exclusively for those who work in large companies but for workers who receive health insurance benefits from their company (archived here). The purple insurance card is often given to senior citizens (archived here), not to the self-employed.
