An Assessment of the Performance of the Japanese Health Care System

Hyoung-Sun Jeong and Jeremy Hurst

No 56, OECD Labour Market and Social Policy Occasional Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: There is much interest in the Japanese health care system from the perspective of other OECD countries. The Japanese health care system appears to perform well. What explains this apparently good performance? This paper aims both to provide a description of how the Japanese health system works and an assessment of its performance in the context of an international comparison.The Japanese health care system is characterised by public health insurance with mainly private providers. Japan has universal public health insurance with coverage of a comprehensive range of services and only modest cost sharing by patients. It has mainly private providers paid mainly by fee-for-service. The share of its population that is elderly is above the OECD average. Such a combination would usually be associated with high levels of health expenditure. Yet less is spent on health care in Japan than would be expected for an OECD country with its standard of living. Cost containment seems to have been ... Le système de santé du Japon suscite beaucoup d'intérêt de la part d'autres pays de l'OCDE. Le système de santé du Japon semble atteindre une performance remarquable. Quels sont les facteurs qui permettent d'expliquer cette dernière? Cet article vise à offrir une description de la façon dont le système de santé du Japon fonctionne et à évaluer sa performance exécution dans le contexte d'une comparaison internationale.Le système de santé du Japon se caractérise par une assurance maladie publique et des offreurs de soins privés. La couverture maladie est universelle et offre une couverture large de services, avec seulement de modestes tickets modérateurs. Les offreurs privés sont payés principalement à l'acte. La part de sa population qui est âgée est au-dessus de la moyenne de l'OCDE. Une telle combinaison serait habituellement associée à des niveaux élevés de la dépense de santé. Pourtant le Japon dépense moins pour sa santé qu'il n'en serait attendu pour un pays de l'OCDE avec son ...

Date: 2001-12-06
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