The System of Medical Care in Japan and its Problems

Abstract

This paper describes the evolution of medical care in Japan with considerable analytical attention to the emergence of several economic system ‘contradictions’. These contradictions include the profitable operation of hospital units and widespread location of these units, scholarly merit of students and ability of families to pay full tuition costs, and the market ethos and the humanitarian instinct. The nature of disease problems has, of recent years, changed. The paper concludes by turning to the problem of improving the health care delivery system within the framework of the kind of market economy Japan presently has.