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Japan's Health Insurance Shaky
By: The Associated Press
The New York Times, May 1, 2001
TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's government-run health insurance program is on the verge of collapse, with a record $4.9 billion deficit expected this year, officials said Tuesday.
``Unless there is drastic reform, the whole system will fall apart,'' Hirotsugu
Shinkawa, a Finance Ministry official in charge of the program, said. ``In order to get it going next year, our health care system must be changed.''
Japan's public and private insurance programs guarantee medical care for virtually all the nation's 126 million people at a cost lower than most industrial nations.
Most people pay premiums for health insurance and make co-payments for doctor visits. But patients can go anywhere they want for treatment.
The national health care program, however, has been deeply in the red the past eight years as Japan's population aged amid an economic slump and rising medical costs.
The number of participants in the state-run medical insurance system fell to 19.68 million in 1998, down 1.4 percent from the previous year, according to the latest government statistics.
The program began eating away its reserves in 1994, when it had an accumulated savings of $12 billion. The program is using up the remainder to make ends meet this year, leaving no more reserves to plug the growing hole.
The government revised the insurance premium scale in 1997 to increase contributions, but the effect was short-lived. The program entered the black the following year, then started declining again.
Contributions to finance health care for the elderly has been the major burden for the program, said Yasoji Kawamoto, a Health Ministry official in charge of medical insurance.
Funding the program will be a major challenge for new Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, whose main campaign promise was to curb Japan's growing national debt, among the largest in the industrialized world. He took office last week.
Officials from the Health Ministry and the Prime Minister's Office have been discussing reform for years. They are expected to make a proposal next year, two years behind the initially targeted 2000.
Officials have to come up with plans by the annual budget request deadline in autumn. |
