Building the Supply System of Regional Health Care

Abstract

Japan’s expanding health expenditure is becoming a financial conundrum for Japanese policy makers. It now exceeds $400 billion and is expected to grow even larger in the next ten years due to seven million Baby Boomers reaching the age of 75 years milestone by the year 2025. In recent years; therefore, Japanese policy makers have embarked in a quest to tackle the inefficient health care supply system. In this paper, some of the reforms in the regional policies adopted by government sectors or institutions will be reviewed and discussed in order to determine their effectiveness and then compared to similar healthcare reforms undertaken by several advanced countries.