Japan’s health-care system is the envy of the world. It is also in crisis

In some business production activities in Japan, there are complex rules, plenty of small players and very limited motivation to enhance. The physicians are very limited which is about one third less than the standard rich-world, comparative to all the inhabitants because of the allocation of the states. Lack of doctors has become a serious problem in rural areas and in particular specialities like surgeons, pediatrics and obstetrics. Lack of pediatrics and obstetrics are given emphasis on the low birth rate of Japan but medical professionals say that they really appeared because salary is somewhat determined by the quantity of medical examinations and drug prescriptions, and there are small number of these for children and pregnant women. Doctors exert their effort for quite low salary about 125,000 dollars a year at mid-career. A doctor in his 30’s says he’s working 100 hours a week.

Urgent health needs is usually poor. In some cities, it is normal for ambulances to drift away in the public road to look for emergency rooms that can fill in a patient. In some instances, people died because of this scenario. The problem of insufficient emergency care is the increase of clinics rather than hospitals because physicians choose to build their own clinics in order to decrease their work load and earn bigger money.

The health care system is slow to embrace the most advanced stage treatments. According to OECD, modern drugs are immediately accepted in Indonesia or Turkey. Limited information is gathered on how patients reacted to medication. Lancet says, the cost is greatly managed but the quality is not. Japan will have a difficulty to build medical tourism as their foundation for economic growth.

The Japanese are fairly proud of their health care system. The citizens benefit from an essential medical assistance and never ran out of money by medical fees. Without extensive reduction of expenses and improvement of profitability, and renovation, the health care system in Japan will face a greater decline.

D. Chang