Using data from Basic Survey on People's Life for 1986, 1989, 1992 and 1995, this article examines choice of health care in Japan when patients suffer from relatively minor and self limiting illnesses. Patients' health information enable authors to make a distinction between acute illness and chronic illness. Empirical results show that in the case of these minor illnesses, the price elasticities for the medical service are between 0.144～0.149. Authors also estimate price elasticities for medical service demand separately for 43 symptoms. Among these symptoms, for almost half of the symptoms, estimated price elasticities are below 1.

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of the copayment rate on the outpatient service utilization.

700 middle-aged male residents in a metropolitan area of Tokyo were surveyed with selfreported questionnaire. Firstly, the incidence and quantity of the outpatient service utilization were compared between the 10% copayment group and the 30% copayment group. Secondly, the effect of two-way interaction between copayment rate and income on the incidence and quantity of utilization were examined. The results were as follows.

1) Probability of any use of outpatient service in one year was higher in the 10% copayment group than in the 30% copayment group.

2) There was no significant difference in the quantity of utilization in a year between two groups.

3) No interactions were observed between copayment rate and income on the incidence and quantity of utilization.

We discussed the effect of the copayment rate on the outpatient service utilization in the following two ways: (1) the effect was direct. (2) the effect was confounding.

This paper aims to discuss different methods of recruiting marrow donors in the United States and in Japan from the viewpoint of marketing theories.

The National Marrow Donor Program in the United States and the Japan Marrow Donor Program in Japan are in charge of recruiting bone marrow donors in order to help patients in need of marrow transplants.

The author will first compare those two non-profit organizations from the standpoint of economics and marketing theories. Then, as a means to examine basic difference between American and Japanese organizations’ attitudes towards organ transplants and donor recruiting, the author will compare campaign posters published by the two Programs.

The author will also discuss problems faced by non-profit organizations, Japanese Marrow Donor Program in particular, in carrying out their campaign. Several suggestions will be made by the author to enhance the present campaign methods.

Marketing theories established by Kotler, Wiebe and Rothschaild are the main reference material for this paper.

This study investigates the effects of the price regulations on the demand for the pharmaceuticals. I propose a method to estimate the effects of the official price and market price on the demand. Using the data on Japanese Pharmaceutical market between 1980－1997, I conduct an empirical study. The estimated elasticity of demand with the official price is －0.61, which indicates that the price reduction had resulted in the increase in expenditure for pharmaceuticals. I also conduct a simulation analysis of price regulations. Japanese pharmaceutical industry is characterized by the growth in volume, while U.S. is by the price increase. The restraint of the demand had become more effective since 1992 due to the new price scheme. The new price reform expected to take place in 2000 would restrain the producer surplus and sales at market price, while it would reduce pharmaceutical sales at the official price. The methods and results shown in this paper can be applied to analyses of various proposals of the new price reform.

A study group in the Institute for Health Economics and Policy, lead by Shigeru Tanaka, developed a universal analytical system that can be applied to all the health care expenditures of a country and named it “Total Domestic Health Expenditures (TDHE).” The TDHE covers not only the Ministry of Health and Welfare statistics on “national health expenditures,” but also various other health related service expenses, operational cost of the third party payers (insurers, concerned government sections and others) and government subsidies to hospitals. The team has continued the study in the past 4 years, improved the analysis methods and conducted international comparison. The international comparison was made possible on the percentage of TDHE against the GDP: 6.5% for Japan, 12.3% for the USA and 9.5% for Germany (1995 figure).