3 ms·

How does japan pay for so many hospital beds? They have almost 5x what we have

therianthropie 7y ago
Germany is also on the top 5 and we pay about 40-60 percent of our income to the state and the employer pays another ~20% on top. I pay about 7% of my income for the health insurance and my employer pays another 7% on top. I'm sure in Japan it will be similar.
- hydroreadsstuff 7y ago
  Yeah that's right. up to ~700 Euros per month for the public health care system. If you earn ~60k or more, you can opt out and get a private plan for less money with other perks. But, overall German's pay ca. 7% (you) +7% (employer) into health care.
Barrin92 7y ago
national healthcare system that doesn't send 10% of the GDP to the insurance industry although the state of the UK seems to suggest that this is a necessary rather than sufficient condition.
- lostlogin 7y ago
  New Zealand has a national healthcare system and has less beds than the US according to this Wiki. As others have pointed out, I suspect the way beds are counted is key. ICUs often have step down units and high dependency units and so on. The way these are counted is going to matter.
ddeck 7y ago
It does so by running a substantial government budget deficit (~3-4%). Japan has not had a surplus since the early 90's and it seems unlikely it will generate one this decade [1], challenging traditional economic wisdom on the consequences of financing your country by printing money (the Japanese central bank is key buyer of government issued bonds). As a result, Japan has the highest government debt level in the developed word, well over 200% of GDP [2]. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-fiscal/japan-delays-budget-surplus-forecast-to-fy2027-as-fiscal-reform-struggles-idUSKCN1UQ0ZU https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-fiscal/japa... [2] https://commodity.com/debt-clock/japan/ https://commodity.com/debt-clock/japan/

Germany is also on the top 5 and we pay about 40-60 percent of our income to the state and the employer pays another ~20% on top. I pay about 7% of my income for the health insurance and my employer pays another 7% on top. I'm sure in Japan it will be similar.

hydroreadsstuff 7y ago
Yeah that's right. up to ~700 Euros per month for the public health care system. If you earn ~60k or more, you can opt out and get a private plan for less money with other perks. But, overall German's pay ca. 7% (you) +7% (employer) into health care.

Barrin92 7y ago

national healthcare system that doesn't send 10% of the GDP to the insurance industry although the state of the UK seems to suggest that this is a necessary rather than sufficient condition.

lostlogin 7y ago
New Zealand has a national healthcare system and has less beds than the US according to this Wiki. As others have pointed out, I suspect the way beds are counted is key. ICUs often have step down units and high dependency units and so on. The way these are counted is going to matter.

ddeck 7y ago

It does so by running a substantial government budget deficit (~3-4%). Japan has not had a surplus since the early 90's and it seems unlikely it will generate one this decade [1], challenging traditional economic wisdom on the consequences of financing your country by printing money (the Japanese central bank is key buyer of government issued bonds). As a result, Japan has the highest government debt level in the developed word, well over 200% of GDP [2]. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-fiscal/japan-delays-budget-surplus-forecast-to-fy2027-as-fiscal-reform-struggles-idUSKCN1UQ0ZU https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-fiscal/japa... [2] https://commodity.com/debt-clock/japan/ https://commodity.com/debt-clock/japan/