Health-Care Paradox Threatens to Add to Japan’s Debt Problems
World’s longest-living citizens are causing medical costs to soar.
Elderly patients wait for their appointments at Aidu Chuo Hospital.
Photographer: Mads Nissen/Panos Pictures/Redux
Atsuko Arai sees a doctor as many as a dozen times a month. The 75-year-old Tokyo retiree has no chronic conditions; she sees these sessions as a way to stave them off. “If I go to the doctor at the frequency I do, I won’t get so sick that I need medication,” she says.
Japanese seniors, who enjoy the world’s longest life expectancy, pay as little as 110 yen ($1) out of pocket for specialist appointments. While these visits may help prevent expensive-to-treat diseases, they’re becoming unaffordable in a country where almost 1 in 7 people is 75 years or older, and annual health-care expenditure grew at a pace 40 times faster than the economy from 2000 to 2016.