Japan Health Reform Will Include NHI Drug Prices

Reform of Japan's Health Insurance Law has been under discussion for thepast few weeks, with the tripartite coalition of the government (ie the Liberal Democratic Party), the Social Democratic Party and the New Party Sakigake finally reaching broad agreement on a new system to be used alongside the current one, aiming to find "the best mixture of the two." What has been agreed upon, according to Lower House member Yuya Niwa (LDP), "is the first step to overhaul the nation's debt-generating health insurance system....we will continue our discussion by the end of fiscal 1997 to find ways of preventing our nation's medical insurance system from going bankrupt."

The tripartite team also agreed to review the country's present prescription drug pricing system. The Japan Times notes that it is "widely recognized" that Japanese people are prescribed more drugs per head of population that in any other country, and says that of Japan's 28,000 billion yen ($223.41 billion) medical spending, over a third goes to drugs.

Council Views On Drug Prices A Council on Reform of the Medical Insurance System statement, published in Pharma Japan, indicates that the plan is to "carry out further discussions to find a new system to replace the official pricing of drugs which, in principle, will determine drug prices on the basis of market prices." It has also asked the Central Social Insurance Council and other relevant councils to study this issue and come to a conclusion, adding that note should be taken of the German reference price system, the USA's free pricing system and France's patient reimbursement scheme.