As long ago as the early 1980s the health ministry made it a priority to get more people to undergo cancer screenings in order to detect the disease at its earliest and easiest-to-treat stages. By 2009, the goal was to have 50 percent of the targeted adult population receive annual tests for five types of cancer — colon, stomach, breast, uterus, lung — by 2012. That goal was not reached, so they moved it back another five years, but since the overall screening rate at present is still somewhere between 20 and 30 percent, it doesn't appear the ministry is going to achieve that goal either.
According to an article in Asahi Shimbun, the main obstacle is income. A center for adult diseases in Osaka analyzed surveys carried out by the health ministry and found that the higher a person's income is, the more likely he or she is to undergo cancer screenings. In fact, screening rates have a direct correlation to the public health insurance program a person is enrolled in. For instance, 48 percent of males enrolled in the Kyosai Kumiai insurance program receive colon cancer screenings. The rate drops to 38 percent for a man in the Kumiai Kenpo program, 27 percent for one in the Kyokai Kenpo program, 19 percent for those who use regular kokumin hoken (national insurance), and only 13 percent for people on public assistance, who get their insurance free.
Kyosai Kumiai members are national and local civil servants, including public school teachers, whose average income in 2009 was ¥2.36 million. Kumiai Kenpo is insurance for companies with 100 or more companies, of which the average member makes ¥1.95 million. Kyokai Kenpo is for companies with less than 100 employees. Their average salary is ¥1.39 million. Regular kokumin hoken is for part-timers, pensioners and the self-employed, who average ¥910,000 a year. People on welfare, of course, don't have income.