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Basing healthcare premiums on waist size is fair. Those with waist sizes greater than the limit would either pay substantially more or do without.
Apply same standards to Medicare and Medicaid, too.
Instead the US puts " My 600 Pound Lifers" on Disability and Medicaid. Makes no sense to subsidize those who decline to take personal responsibility for their own health.
Obesity in many European countries is also much higher than in Japan but the cost of health care is the same as in Japan. The US system is terrible for the people but great for the big pharma and insurance companies.
Healthcare spending in Japan is significantly below that of Western and Northern Europe.
There are far fewer healthcare related lawsuits and much lower awards in such suits. Also, doctors are paid a lot less. I have a student who is among the top gastric cancer surgeons in Japan (and Japan leads the world in that specialty) I think he makes about $150,000 per year. A comparable surgeon in America would make at least 4 times that much.
The downside for Japan is the skyrocketing cost of new chemotherapy drugs to treat their elderly population. They will have to move to a less generous system of reimbursement for those medications or face a crisis within the next few years.
I'll take their healthcare stance if we can also take their stance on immigration.
Deal?
That's actually a problem for the Japanese because they have an ageing population and a shrinking workforce. Which will probably put a bigger burden on their health care system in time.
Japanese people may be slim, but they smoke far more than Americans do.
But they also walk, run, or bike everywhere. The last time I worked there, I was in better shape at sge 65 than I was at age 45 in the U.S.
And take it from someone whose family availed themselves of Japanese doctors, dentists, hospitals, and clinics regularly: the Japanese healthcare system is vastly more efficient than America's.
Having said that, it's important to make a few distinctions between the two.
For one thing, the population of Japan, while older, is much more active and fit than that of America. They have to be, or they'd never get to work, school, or anywhere else. Cars are an expensive and often impractical luxury. If you miss the bus, train, or subway, you're cooked. If you grocery shop on the way home, and forget the mayonnaise, guess what? You schlep back to the market. On your bike. Often in the rain. Holding an umbrella.
In addition, the prices of drugs, procedures, hospital stays, tests, etc. are set by the government and publicly posted in many clinics and hospitals. There are no lengthy waits for a bill, write-offs, co-pays, and all the other BS that keep U.S. Insurance companies fat, and employ countless thousands of women to shuffle files around and explain why this or that isn't covered by company A but might be by company B, etc., etc. At a Japanese hospital, you pay the bill when you leave, to a cash machine that also takes credit or debit cards, and knows who you are, what room you were in, which doctor treated you, with what medicine, what prescriptions you were given ( often at the hospital or clinic -- none of this driving across town to find a pharmacy open) -- all after reading your little medical card, whichnis good all over Japan...
Most important, though, is the focus on patient care rather than on satisfying insurance companies, accountants, and drug companies, as in the U.S. Doctors in Japan -- aside from those who operate expensive clinics -- are more modestly recompensed than their U.S. counterparts. Private rooms, TV sets, and other paraphernalia are foregone in favor of simple, delicious food, immaculate cleanliness, and nurses and other hospital staff who pay more attention to patients than to the computers that rule their lives in America and leave them grim-visaged and exhausted.
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