Abstract
Japan is a developed economy with a very high population. It is also an economy with the second-highest index for the aging population. The country is also rated to be an economy with better healthcare standards globally owing to good political leadership, ideologues, and the history of the world war. Japan has functional healthcare insurance with mandatory healthcare insurance for all citizens. However, healthcare insurance cannot function optimally due to excess demand for health services from the primary population and immigrating populations.
Research background.
Japan is a second-class economy with a population index of 125.7 million citizens and close to 4000 healthcare insurance scheme providers, with the major provider being the government of Japan. Health insurance in Japan covers 4 tiers: citizens, students, the unemployed, those working for less than 30 hours weekly, and those employed and the self-employed. Japan records a successful healthcare system globally, emanating from its history during the world war, the culture of the people, and political ideologies such as socialism. Japanese healthcare insurance dates back to the Second World War when a socialist minister announced “healthcare for all” to tame the effects of war on the citizen’s health. Over the years, legislation has been advancements to better health insurance in Japan.
The Japanese government covers 70% of the health insurance of these individuals and extends the extra obligation of 30% financing the health insurance scheme to the covered individuals. Healthcare insurance in Japan is mandatory for all citizens and immigrants who visit the country for more than 90 days. Healthcare insurance in Japan is comprehensive and covers various healthcare issues such as general checkups, preventive care, accidents, admission in caregiving, neonatal and perinatal care, and any other therapy recommended by medical specialists. The Japanese government is more concerned with children’s health, students’ health, and elders’ health; for this reason, it covers up to 80 % of the healthcare costs of these individuals. The employer deducts the health insurance for employed citizens on a check basis. The government, a major employer in the country, finds it easy to collect these funds and consolidate them into health insurance funds.
Japan also allows for private healthcare insurance in Japan. However, there is high regulation of private healthcare insurance due to safety concerns and scandalous undertakings of private healthcare insurance providers. According to (), private health insurance was limited to orthodontics coverage and expensive cosmetic procedures. However, new laws allow private healthcare insurance uptake in coverage of healthcare costs that are negligible. The expansion of public healthcare insurance in Japan has also provided an allowance for the expansion of private healthcare insurance in Japan.
According to the success indicators of better healthcare and morbidity standards in Japan are low infant mortality rates and high life expectancy. Even with these items in place, japan still faces many challenges in healthcare provision. One of the weaknesses of Japan’s healthcare systems is the inefficiency of primary healthcare. Non-standardized clinical guidelines and poor patients to specialist ratio. While these are problems of healthcare training of specialists, they expand to affect the implementation of healthcare insurance in the country.
Research objectives
The objective of this research paper is to
- Examine the challenges affecting the effective implementation of healthcare insurance in Japan.
- Conduct a comparative analysis of japans healthcare insurance and other first-class and developed countries.
- Analyze the successes and the opportunities available for healthcare insurance implementation in Japan.
Research findings
The following findings are made from the cross-examination of the qualitative research conducted by investigating various literature and peer-reviewed research documents and articles. The major challenges affecting the successful implementation of healthcare insurance in Japan are a bloated healthcare budget, excess demand for healthcare services leading to reduced healthcare quality, and the emergence of lifestyle diseases that are expensive to treat.
Bloated healthcare budget
According to (), 12% of Japan’s GDP goes to financing healthcare services, with a major portion going to healthcare insurance. While this is the case, japan has economic stagnation, bad debt, and a rapidly aging population that does not conform to the economic standards of a second-class nation. In essence, japans healthcare financing is a going concern. Improving healthcare technology, new pharmaceutical products, and advanced medical procedures are escalating Japan’s high healthcare funding cost. While there is a fast-forward advancement in medical care through the use of modern and updated technology, efficient and modern medicine accompanied with the use of accurate procedures and guidelines of the 21st century, these improvements have made healthcare budgets bloated in an economy with stagnating economic growth.
The rapidly increasing healthcare cost is also attributed to the fact that Japan has a rapidly aging population. Japan’s demographic composition has 125.7 million individuals, with the aging population standing at 29.0% of the total population. The aging population of Japan is the second highest globally after Monaco. While this is due to the success of the healthcare and effective morbidity standards, japan may suffer economic problems since the high aging population consists of many individuals above 65 years of age with declining economic viability. This contributes to economic stagnation since the majority of funds have to be redistributed by the government back to consumption through the provision of elderly care, purchase of pharmaceutical products, and to payment of caregivers o older people. Japan’s government has a soft spot for older people, which has created more amenities for older people, including almost free healthcare insurance. While these groups are vulnerable to infections, they are frequently hospitalized compared to young adults and teenagers. Therefore, there is rapid spending on the healthcare insurance coverage of older people in Japan by the Japanese government, leading to a bloated healthcare and insurance budget.
Excess demand and low supply for healthcare services.
There is a very high demand for healthcare services in Japan, leading to overstretching and overutilization of healthcare amenities in Japan. The demand for japans healthcare services is both primary and imported, owing to the good reputation of Japan’s ineffective healthcare provision. Many migrant patients travel to Japan from overseas hoping to get expert medical care, better treatment procedures and medicines, and good technology used by Japan in healthcare provision that has made Japan have a higher life span and low mortality rates, especially among children.
Japan’s excess demand for healthcare services is also attributed to its large population. Japan’s population of 125.7 million and projected population growth of – 0.53% means that the population will reduce by a very mean margin. This means the primary demand for Japan’s healthcare will still be high ceteris paribus. The special and vulnerable composition of Japan’s population, children and older people, are also still the highest. This is because there is a high life expectancy and high morbidity standards to cushion child mortality. With these special considerations in place, children and older people still give the desired attention for effective healthcare delivery. This may lead to inequitable resource allocation for the healthcare needs of different compositions of the population.
In Japan, there are 260,000 doctors taking care of a population of 125.7 million citizens, with an additional influx of 5 million immigrants anytime. This brings the patient-doctor ratio to 1: 502. Meaning that for every doctor, 502 patients are supposed to be served. It is very expensive to train more doctors. Most experienced doctors also brain drain Japan for better opportunities in other developed economies. Others have also quit for private service delivery. Even if Japan has functional healthcare insurance, the doctor to patients ratio is detrimental to effective healthcare insurance since citizens are obliged to pay for the insurance but still need to get the value for the money they use for healthcare subscriptions.
There are also problems of congested healthcare facilities and overstretching of healthcare resources because healthcare is affordable. The excess demand for healthcare products has created pressure on the healthcare amenities such as hospitals and medicine. Most patients requiring critical care stay at home because of the dangers of staying in hospitals with other numerous patients who may pause public health risks such as reinfection with the disease. Other patients also stay away from hospitals because the critical and emergency care facilities are crowded, and they may need more time to be given healthcare services. This reason has caused an increase in demand for private healthcare providers even when the goal of healthcare insurance in Japan is to make healthcare cheaper and affordable to all without discrimination on social status. The government of Japan has tried mitigating this matter through legislation, resource allocation expansion of existing healthcare facilities, and other mitigating strategies, but this has not worked because pat form healthcare, there are other services such as security, education, and development of infrastructure which are pressing for the government to discharge on.
Comparative studies between Japan healthcare insurance and other economies.
Japan, just like USA and China, are economies with a high population endowment. These economies have had rigorous; legislation and practices to make health insurance accessible to all citizens. The USA implemented universal health coverage and Obama Care which is healthcare insurance that is meant to lower the cost of healthcare, create accessibility of health services, provide quality healthcare services, and also manage and minimize healthcare risks to the general population. On the other hand, China is a major victim of COVID-19 and, from these dangerous experience, developed healthcare insurance meant to help the country prepare for such uncertainties.
For all three economies, the government pays for a major stake in healthcare insurance while citizens contribute a little to the healthcare insurance bipartisanly. In all these economies, private insurance providers help the government manage the excesses of healthcare insurance in the countries. These countries all suffer from the problem of excess demand for healthcare services both from the primary population and from the population of immigrants since the three countries attract higher populations owing to their faster rates of economic growth and expansion that attract members of developing and underdeveloped nations in pursuit of employment and livelihood. In all three economies, the government spends heavily on healthcare provision, health infrastructure development, and healthcare research, making healthcare an expensive item of resource allocation during budgeting.
In the three economies, healthcare insurance is only partially effective in cushioning the entire population against healthcare risks. But these economies have performed well in managing mortality rates, improving birth rates, and increasing life expectancy in their countries.
In conclusion, the healthcare insurance of Japan, just like China and the USA, suffers from expanding financial budgets owing to the increasing populations of those countries. Japan, just like the USA and China, has made major strides n healthcare delivery through the use of modern medicine, appropriate medical technology y as well research on more efficient medical procedures that have led to increased life expectancy, low child mortality, high adult population and other genera successes of healthcare. It is, however, important for Japan to address the challenges of reducing healthcare quality, increasing private health insurance, bloated healthcare budget, and the emergence of new diseases that make health insurance expensive for the country to sustain.
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