Government Drops Payment Hike for High-cost Medical Care

Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare, Takamaro Fukuoka, announced that his ministry would abandon raising the upper limit for out-of-pocket payment in high-cost medical care for the patients needing a long period of care. Although the ministry decided to raise the threshold last December, it rethinks its policy, receiving protests from the patients with such a serious disease as cancer. In midst of discussion over revision of FY 2025 budget, the medical payment appeared to be one of the political issues among parties.

The government of Japan introduced high-cost medical care benefit in 1973, which exempts the patient who received expensive medical treatment from paying for full cost. In a case of a person with 11.6 million yen or more annual income had 1 million yen of medical treatment in a month, the person does not have to pay more than 254.18 thousand yen. If a person’s income were too low to pay for income tax, the one is not required to pay more than 35.4 thousand yen.

 

The health ministry once decided in December that the system needed to be revised. One reason was highly aged society. The insurance fee of young people who support the system mainly used by the old agers became unaffordable. Another was the decision of previous Fumio Kishida administration that certain amount of budget for high-cost medical care benefit should be shifted to the allowances for the mothers with little child. The government needed to ask more payment for each patient with high-cost medical treatment.

 

The government immediately faced backlash from the patients with difficulty in paying for their serious disease. An organization of cancer patients submitted their opinion to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) that the revision would be too cruel for the patients who need a long-time care for their difficult disease. They also argued that the ministry did not have enough information about the patients and there would be another budget to be cut.

 

In a discussion of the Diet, a lawmaker with Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan demanded the government to reconsider the revision, introducing her own experience as a cancer patient. “I don’t think the policy can be decided without hearing from ones who are suffering the most,” said Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. CDPJ requested the Liberal Democratic Party to drop the change in high-cost medical care benefit from FY 2025 budget bill.

 

Receiving pressure from patients and the opposition parties, Ishiba administration retracted the policy. While the government supposed to raise the payment for four or more high-cost medical treatments a month, to which discount is set, it decided not to introduce that change. A policy targeting the most suffering people resulted in incompletion.

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