The price of health care is changing. On Feb. 10, a government medical council approved a long list of revisions for the fees hospitals and pharmacies can charge under the nation’s public health insurance program. The dictionary-thick list reflects an effort by the government ...
The health ministry is taking steps to help more young people quit smoking, including expanding the availability of care and penalizing medical institutions with low success rates of treating such addiction. The ministry plans to expand national health insurance coverage in fiscal 2016 beginning ...
Lists of personal information related to around 103,000 people, including public health insurance card numbers, are leaked and sold.
Japan is running out of cash to pay for its public health insurance and pension programs. Although credited with underpinning the national success story, the systems are under increasing strain as the population grays. Membership of the programs is mandatory for residents. They pay ...
Tokyo police have arrested a total of 16 gangsters and others on charges of swindling municipal governments out of public health insurance money. The arrested include Keitaro Mito, 49, boss of a group affiliated with the Tokyo-based Sumiyoshi-kai, a major yakuza crime syndicate, and ...
Young smokers could see the scope of their health insurance expand if they are willing to take steps to quit the habit through smoking-cessation treatments. To lower future medical costs caused by nicotine addiction and reduce the risks of cancer and cardiovascular disease, the ...
The national government needs to provide sufficient support to prefectural governments, which will be tasked to play a larger role in maintaining the nation's health insurance system.
The Abe administration has decided on a plan to overhaul the national medical insurance system, in part by shifting responsibility from municipal to prefectural governments. Many small municipal-level insurance unions currently operate in the red. The reform, which is to take effect in 2018, ...
Blue-blooded Finance Minister Taro Aso stirs up a debate on social welfare costs by complaining it's unfair his taxes are financing the medical costs of lazy people.
The government should give up its attempt to introduce mixed medical treatment and instead speed up the process for approving coverage and use of new drugs and medical technologies under the public health insurance system.
A new payment scheme for medical services under Japan's public health insurance may create fierce competition among doctors to monopolize patients.
Tea party-affiliated Republicans in the U.S. House are gearing up again, this time on a grander scale, to threaten action that will end up helping the other side.
