Effects of the Reform of the Social Medical Insurance System in Japan

Atsushi Yoshida and Shingo Takagi

The Japanese Economic Review, 2002, vol. 53, issue 4, 444-465

Abstract: We estimate outpatient medical care demand functions and examine the effects of the 1997 reform of the medical insurance system. We focus on the issue of which persons have been most affected by the reform and on the extent to which price elasticities have changed since the reform. The estimation results show that the reform affected mainly dependants’ demand for medical care, which implies that all members of the household shared the increase in the medical costs of the head of the household. Price elasticities ranged from −0.18 to −0.26 before the reform, and from −0.08 to −0.11 after the reform. JEL Classification Numbers: C35, I10, I18.

Date: 2002
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