Abstract
Free access to medical care plays an important role in supporting Japan’s medical security, along with universal health insurance system and the “benefits in kind” scheme. With talks about the tightening of the social security’s revenue sources being propagated in recent years, however, there now is endless pressure to drive this free access into abolition. Therefore, from the viewpoint of the likelihood of opportunity costs, we investigated the logic, ethical problems, and consensus status concerning free access being upheld by the government, Japanese public, and healthcare professionals. The results showed that arguments on restricting free medical access contained numerous erroneous determination of facts. Therefore, to appropriately judge the problem of distribution surrounding free medical access, the government and public must first recognize the facts correctly, and discuss whether free medical access should be abolished. Needless to say, the situation whereby medical and social security’s revenue sources have become tight should not be left unattended. However, we absolutely cannot justify the practice of carelessly accepting assumptions mixed with errors without recognizing accurate facts and evaluating the problem of distribution by rushing to the conclusion that free access should be substantially suppressed. If there is a possibility that healthcare may deteriorate by implementing policies that had been accepted with erroneous assumptions as the premise in a rush to solve the problem, we must stop such practices. Therefore, for the government and the general public to carry out appropriate policy discussions, there is room for re-examining the premises that are based on these erroneous assumptions.
