Changes And Evaluation Of Japan 's Old - Age Medical Insurance System And Its Enlightenment To China

Since 1967, when Japan implemented the National Health Insurance, the elders have been included into the medical insurance system. However, pacing into the aging society since 1970s, the medical expenses on elders has been suffered a fast increase. This problem not only brings a more and more serious burden for Japanese government, but also leads to unequal distribution between different generations. To resolve this problem, Japanese Government has tried a series of reforms on elderly medical insurance system. In doing so, they considerably reduced the costs for the elderly, reducing the national deficit simultaneously as a whole. As result, they have quite rich experience in this area.China has the biggest population in the world. In 2002, elders over 65 years old have already taken up 7.09% of the total population. Since that year, China could be regarded as an aging society. According to national population census of 2010, elders over 65 years old have already reach 118930000 and taken up 8.91% of the total population. According to the forecasting of search report on the trend of China’s aging population published by National Commission on Aging, in the next half era, China’s aging trend will step into fast developing stage. A sound social insurance system is a good measure to reply to the aging problem. Medical insurance system for elders is quite important and necessary for elders to sustain. Even though China have successively built the system of medical insurance for urban workers, the medical insurance for urban residents and the new rural cooperative medical insurance, until now, the history of the medical insurance system in China is not more than 20 years. In the meantime, even China kept revolutionizing their medical insurance system, improving their coverage of the insurance, but the level of insurance is too low. The base medical insurance of China has not reached the prefect degree of Japan. Compared to the Japan, no matter on the security level, the legal system construction or the management system, the medical insurance of seniors advance in China is way behind. And the lack enough care for elders. The fact is China is pacing into aging society; the health need and medical expenditure on elders are all increasing in an astonishing speed. In this situation, how to protect the rights and interests of the elderly medical insurance, built a prefect medical and health service system is our goal, considerably reduced costs for the seniors.This paper focuses on the reform history of Japanese elderly medial insurance system and makes summarize on the advantages and disadvantages of Japan’s reform on elderly medical system. Then this paper implements a comparative analysis on Japan and China and makes conclusions on China’s future reform trend of elder reform system. Finally, this paper offer recommendations for China to implement elderly medical system reform based on the experience from Japan. The author hopes that this paper could make contribution to the problem of medical heath in this special aging society.