Japan's Medical Care System

Japan's medical care system, like those of most Western industrialized nations, is based on three essential objectives: ready access, high quality, and reasonable cost.

Abstract

Japan's medical care system, like those of most Western industrialized nations, is based on three essential objectives: ready access, high quality, and reasonable cost. Within that framework, however, every culture influences the provision of medical care in countless ways. For example, Japan's medical care system reflects in some respects the entrepreneurial, market-driven nature of its economy, yet it also expresses a policy that hospitals should be organized on a nonprofit basis, that all citizens should have access to care regardless of their capacity to pay, and that physicians should place the patient's welfare above material gain.Although Japan shares with . . .