The Art of Balance in Health Policy: Maintaining Japan's Low-Cost, Egalitarian System

by John Creighton Campbell , Naoki Ikegami

• ISBN13: 9780521065054
• ISBN10: 0521065054
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-06-12
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

Compared to the rest of the world, Japan has a healthy population but pays relatively little for medical care. This book analyses how the health care works, and how it came into being. Taking a comparative perspective, the authors describe the politics of health care, the variety of providers, the universal health insurance system, and how the fee-schedule constrains costs at both the macro and micro levels. Special attention is paid to issues of quality and to the difficult problems of assuring adequate high-tech medicine and long-term care. Although the authors discuss the drawbacks to Japan's stringent cost-containment policy, they also keep in mind the possible implications for reform in the United States. Egalitarian values and a concern for 'balance' among constituents, the authors argue, are essential for cost containment as well as for access to health care.

Table of Contents

Preface

Low health care spending in Japan

Actors, arenas, and agendas in health policy making

Health care providers

The egalitarian health insurance system

The macropolicy of cost containment

The micropolicy of cost containment

The quality problem

Lessons?

Notes

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.