Japanese Health Care
The NPR program, All Things Considered recently had a six-minute segment (audio) on a comparison of the Japanese and U.S. health care systems. The program indicates that the Japanese pay less, get more, and cover everyone (45 million Americans – 15% – are uninsured in the U.S.) but that it is tightly controlled by the government even though the doctors and hospitals are private and that profits are low or non-existant. In every system – health care and otherwise – there are winners and losers. Based on the story, in the U.S., doctors, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and well-insured patients are the winners. In Japan it appears that the patients are the winners. Oh and Japan has the healthiest people and longest life-span. They must be doing something right.
Poor Mari….she’s my favorite. If I ever become a j-pop singer and part of the...
Shes definitely at the top of my hot list.
perfeckt 10:10
What I like about the Japanese model of socialized health care is that, as a general rule, user fees are also charged (in contrast to the Canadian system, where user fees are not charged). I get the sense that such a system discourages frivolous use and gives users an appreciation of the monetary value of the services that they obtaining. I also appreciate the fact that dental services are covered in Japan (again, in contrast to the Canadian system).
April 17th, 2008 at 6:29 amMaybe they have low health care costs because they have the healthiest people. Healthy people have got to cost less than sick people.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:40 amah by the way:
The live longer because they eat so very much more healthy than people in the States (and parts of Europe).
Less fat, less pre-processed food, less friggin High-Fructose-Corn-Syrup, MUCH more fresh food, much more fish etc…
April 17th, 2008 at 2:26 pmI would have liked this story more if they acknowledged the rare, but always shocking, occasions when people have been denied care at a hospital in emergency situations, which is a direct consequence of the budget problems the hospitals are facing. The problem of under-funded hospitals is not a desirable one as his closing remarks would suggest!
April 17th, 2008 at 4:17 pmThat’s right feticlub. Japan’s hospitals are facing all kinds of staffing and funding problems. Also, as of yesterday I believe, people over 75 years old in Japan have to start paying health insurance, and they aren’t too happy about it.
April 17th, 2008 at 6:55 pmNPR is not a good source, as they do have a socialistic agenda. I used to support NPR but have tossed that option out of the window since they are so liberally biased, it makes me gag. That said, I did visit a Doctor in Japan and recieved care for a minor problem. The care was good and I saw the Doctor right away. But I have to admit, they were not as advanced as my Doctor in the USA. Not far behind but still not as well equipped. Socializing medicine? Beware of what you wish for.
April 17th, 2008 at 10:09 pmMy experiences in Japan suggest that location and hospital really matters. If you can get into the big hospitals in urban centers, you can get really high tech treatments that might exceed what you’ll receive in the US or elsewhere. However, the little one doctor places in more rural areas are pretty hit or miss.
However, I dearly loved getting an MRI for $50 in Japan for safety sake.
April 17th, 2008 at 10:33 pmI’m curious. I pay almost $8,000 per year to insure my family under Japan’s system. How does that compare to America?
That doesn’t include the extra insurance I have to buy, because that money doesn’t cover care overseas, and Japanese hospitals come up very short in very many areas. Transplants, for example, are still very rare and mostly not covered. Bunion surgery, at the other end, is 30 years behind America, assuming you can find a doctor who has ever heard of it.
Hospitals tend to be old, and there are usually 6 or so patients to a room.
That said, it’s far from the worst system in the world, but it’s also far behind many other countries’ systems.
So my question is, at 8 grand a year, how exactly is it a better deal than the US? Yes, a $50 MRI is nice…but you in fact pay a lot more than $50.
(I may as well mention that 99% of all major drug breakthroughs are in the US. If they go socialist, what will happen to medical advances?)
April 18th, 2008 at 8:37 pm“I pay almost $8,000 per year to insure my family under Japan’s system. How does that compare to America?”
I don’t know what your family’s health is like or if any of them have preexisting conditions, but the average for a family is not even half that in most of the states. However, in some states, like New Jersey, the average is about $14,000 dollars, and that’s due to over-regulation. Prohibiting companies from denying insurance to anyone is easily the worst regulation, and it’s why health insurance is obscenely expensive in states like New Jersey and Massachusetts.
As for the original post, life expectancy is a very poor measure of a nation’s medical quality. A better measure is survival rates for people with cancer (since medicine has a lot more control over that), and by that measure, America beats the rest of the world, particularly for breast cancer and prostate cancer.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:19 pm“but the average for a family is not even half that in most of the states.”
Oops, I was wrong. In most states, the average for a family is about 6000 dollars I think.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:27 pmJust to make sure that everyone understands, this is a blog about Japan. U.S. party-based sniping, bickering, and asides will not be tolerated in any form. This has been a rule on JAPUNDIT since its founding and it is strictly enforced.
April 19th, 2008 at 5:28 pmLong life expectancy of Japanese people comes mainly from Japanese food custom with less animal fat, soybeans products, lots of fish and vegetables. Scandinavian or Mediterranean people (who have also long life expectancy) have it similar with milk products, fish and vegetables.
I don’t think Japanese medical standard is higher than the US, but the medial fee and insurance fee in the US must be much higher than those in Japan. What I wonder is whether Americans will put more money for Madicaid and Medicare so that the medical system covers everyone including those additional 45 million Americans.
April 19th, 2008 at 5:43 pmLong life expectancy of Japanese people comes mainly from Japanese food custom with less animal fat, soybeans products, lots of fish and vegetables.
Really?
Under the “traditional” pre-war Japanese diet, life expectancy here was somewhere the 40’s, where it had held steady for decades previously. It was only after the start of the U.S. occupation that the Japanese life expectancy started to climb, mainly due to the increased intake of high-quality protein.
Also, isn’t the longest life expectancy among the Japanese down in Okinawa where they traditionally eat relatively larger amounts of pork and less rice than the mainlanders?
I would say that the modern Japanese diet has more of a problem with high-glycemic carbs (rice, noodles, sweets, soft drinks, etc.) than with animal fat.
April 19th, 2008 at 6:59 pmOK, if you compare today’s Japanese diet to ” pre-war ” one, today’s diet is far richer in high-quality protein, this certainly contributed much to long life expectancy like in Okinawa.
I think both high glycemic carbs diet and high animal fat diet are equally bad. Anyway, I know the argument that Japan’s younger generation might not live longer than elder generation today.
April 19th, 2008 at 7:31 pm