Originally Posted by
hailstorm
Do you have any personal experience in what you speak of?
Depends where you go (What, you mean some hospitals are different than others in Japan!? Crazy talk!").
These guys had everything I needed, including some very new stuff.
Can't speak of this for my own medical needs, but the two times I have ridden in an ambulance with other people, the help seemed competent.
Been to five hospitals as either patient or visitor, and have only seen 4 or 6 per room at most. Not the greatest, but if you want to pay for your own room, you usually can.
This is true. Because there is a form of universal health care, the government has tremenous leverage in working out prices with the hospitals for care, and they use that for people's benefit.
All in all, I think there's more harm to the patient in a too short trip to the hospital than there is in a too long trip.
True. But not impossible to overcome, and the government paying 90% of home helper costs for truly disabled seniors is a tremendous help.
It may not be sustainable, but in its current state, Japan's health care system serves people a hell of a lot better than America's (which is also unsustainable, current form or Obamacare) does.
Not true. Japan has better health (e.g. longer life expectancy at birth) less obesity, but this has nothing to do with health care. It is simply a result of less eating, less driving and less homicide. If you look at life expectancy, at 65 or 70 (which is a good measure of the health care system), there is almost no difference despite vastly higher rates of obesity in the U.S.
The government sets prices wrong. So instead of getting the right and latest up to date diagnoses and treatments, instead you get cheap treatment and spend 5 times as long in the hospital as in the U.S. (e.g 22 days on average for a hip replacement vs. 4 in the U.S.). BTW - The biggest risk for many procedures is infection, for which your risk is greatly increased when your length of hospital stay is increased.
If you look at cancer survival rates, they are much higher in the U.S. Again a good measure of the quality of health cared.
In home care covered by the hospital includes someone coming over to give a bath or a massage. If you need 24X7 help, it's $6k/month out of pocket. If the patient needs to be institutionalized, the waiting list is sometimes in excess of 10 years.
Japan's health care is cheap.... but it's not....good.