Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has ordered his ministers to study specific measures to curb increases in medical expenditures as an effort to restore the nation's fiscal health.
"In order to achieve the fiscal rehabilitation goal for fiscal 2020, we have to steadily promote expenditure reforms," Abe said Friday at a meeting of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, referring to the goal of turning the primary balance into a surplus.
As a step to curb medication costs, a major factor for rises in medical expenditures, private-sector members of the government panel urged the government to "drastically cut the price of Opdivo," an expensive new drug for cancer treatment.