健康セミナー参加者におけるセルフメディケーション税制に関する実態調査と税制改定に向けた課題の抽出

抄録

Enactment of the self-medication tax deduction system is expected to lead to changes in the public’s behavior towards self-medication and contribute to the optimization of medical expenses. In this study, we rolled out an anonymous self-administered questionnaire on “awareness,” “understanding,” and “interest” about the self-medication tax deduction system to 246 participants of a health promotion seminar to extract and identify challenges towards future revisions to the tax system, so as to clarify the public’s current stance about the tax system and elucidate future issues and challenges in the system prior to termination of the Act on Special Measures Concerning Taxation (December 31, 2021). As a result, more than 60％ of the respondents were aware of this tax system, but in general the public had little understanding about its details. Furthermore, only 14％ of respondents who were purchasing more than 12,000 JPY worth of switch medicines annually had applied for deductions because of the lower limit of application being too high and the current medical cost deductions being higher. On the other hand, many of the respondents who were not aware about this tax system showed interest in it and said that they would like to use the system if they fulfilled the requirements for application. In order to optimize medical costs, we believe it is necessary to relax the requirements for application to the tax system, and to make the public more aware about medicines that are covered as well as the details of the system.