Chapter 4 Health Care
4.1 Introduction
The health care service system in Japan is delivered by mandatory, non-profit public health insurance systems, and not by the service providers for profit. Japan’s public health insurance system is composed of three types of health insurances: occupation-based, municipality-based, and a separate system for persons 75 years old and over. Every resident in Japan must belong to a public insurance as an enrollee. All health insurers are not-for-profit organizations. Health services are provided not only by public providers, but also private ones which satisfies the “non-profit” principle. Patients enjoy “freedom of choice,” which assures people can select and contact the physicians in any medical institutions. The cost of medical care is financed through insurance premiums, tax revenues, and copayments. Elderly, infants and low income people are completely or partially exempted from copayments. Other people must pay copayments which are 30% of the total medical cost when they use medical services. According to income level and age of patients, the maximum amount of copayment is determined. Sustainability of the system depends on whether the inter-institutional redistribution of the burden can work or not, and whether enough human resources are available for service provision to elderly.
4.2 Public Health Insurance
4.2.1 History
Health insurance system in Japan has been continuously developing since the 1920s. At first, the Health Insurance Act was enacted in 1922. While occurrence of the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 made the enforcement of the law delayed until 1927, this public health insurance covered “blue color” workers in the factory and the mine. Secondly, the National Health Insurance act was enacted in 1938. This law widened the coverage of public health insurance not only to farmers, but also to the general public not covered by the Health Insurance Law. The National Health Insurance Law prescribed that municipalities could be insurers of the national health insurance for the people living in their regions. However, the law permitted that municipalities could choose not to establish the national health insurance, and that people could enroll the public health insurance by their decision. Hence there remained non-insured people. From 1939 through 1941, other public health insurance law started to cover the “white color” workers, including government officials. Furthermore, the public health insurance system also started to cover seaman by Seamen’s Insurance Act in 1940. In summary, before WWII, the public health insurance system in Japan gradually developed by enacting different health insurance laws for each sub-group in the whole society.
Public health insurance developed further after WWII. Laws on public health insurance which had been enacted before the end of the WWII were consecutively used after the war. Hence the public health insurances had been taking over the characteristics before. Each law of public health insurance regulated its own financial budget, therefore their managements had been independent from each other. More importantly, lack of the law for comprehensive health insurance coverage implied that there remained the possibility that non-insured people existed. This defect was improved by the enforcement of the new National Health Insurance Act in 1961, with which Japan attained universal coverage. The new National