The Art of Balance in Health Policy
Maintaining Japan's Low-Cost, Egalitarian System

Describes the politics and economics of health care in Japan and their implications for the USA.

John Creighton Campbell (Author), Naoki Ikegami (Author)

9780521065054, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 12 June 2008

240 pages, 6 b/w illus. 3 tables
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.4 cm, 0.356 kg

"Campbell and Ikegami provide a concise and informative description of how Japan's health system works, analyze how the system has achieved such exemplary results, and propose some specific lessons for the United States. This book is likely to become the standard text on Japan's health system and is timely for the global debate about how to reform health systems. The book's argument to explain Japan's successes in health policy, therefore, deserves serious consideration. Campbell and Ikegami have written an accessible and concise book about Japan's health policy, as a lens for viewing and critiquing the persistent problems in the American health-care system." Journal of Japanese Studies

Compared to the rest of the world, Japan has a healthy population but pays relatively little for medical care. This book analyses how the health care works, and how it came into being. Taking a comparative perspective, the authors describe the politics of health care, the variety of providers, the universal health insurance system, and how the fee-schedule constrains costs at both the macro and micro levels. Special attention is paid to issues of quality and to the difficult problems of assuring adequate high-tech medicine and long-term care. Although the authors discuss the drawbacks to Japan's stringent cost-containment policy, they also keep in mind the possible implications for reform in the United States. Egalitarian values and a concern for 'balance' among constituents, the authors argue, are essential for cost containment as well as for access to health care.

Preface
1. Low health care spending in Japan
2. Actors, arenas, and agendas in health policy making
3. Health care providers
4. The egalitarian health insurance system
5. The macropolicy of cost containment
6. The micropolicy of cost containment
7. The quality problem
8. Lessons?
9. Notes.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP]