Sasaki Toshiyuki    Department   School of Medicine(Tokyo Women's Medical University Hospital), School of Medicine    Position   Assistant Professor
Article types	Review article
Language	English
Peer review	Peer reviewed
Presence of invitation	Invited paper
Title	Current trends in health insurance systems: OECD countries vs. Japan.
Journal	Formal name：Neurologia medico-chirurgica Abbreviation：Neurol Med Chir (Tokyo) ISSN code：(1349-8029)0470-8105(Linking)
Volume, Issue, Page	55(4),pp.267-275
Author and coauthor	Sasaki Toshiyuki, Izawa Masahiro, Okada Yoshikazu
Publication date	2015/04
Summary	Over the past few decades, the longest extension in life expectancy in the world has been observed in Japan. However, the sophistication of medical care and the expansion of the aging society, leads to continuous increase in health-care costs. Medical expenses as a part of gross domestic product (GDP) in Japan are exceeding the current Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average, challenging the universally, equally provided low cost health care existing in the past. A universal health insurance system is becoming a common system currently in developed countries, currently a similar system is being introduced in the United States. Medical care in Japan is under a social insurance system, but the injection of public funds for medical costs becomes very expensive for the Japanese society. In spite of some urgently decided measures to cover the high cost of advanced medical treatment, declining birthrate and aging population and the tendency to reduce hospital and outpatients' visits numbers and shorten hospital stays, medical expenses of Japan continue to be increasing.
DOI	10.2176/nmc.ra.2014-0317
PMID	25797778