Japan is to cut the prices of National Health Insurance-listed drugs byabout 10% next spring, in a move to reduce the budget deficit.
Announcing the price cuts, the third in consecutive years, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said a "substantial cut in drug prices" was central to curbing health spending growth and would reduce total drug spending in Japan by about 800 billion yen ($660 million) a year, saving the government 200 billion yen.
The MHW has just announced that health service spending went up a record 6% in 1996 to 26,420,000 billion yen ($21.78 billion), mainly as a result of a 9.7% rise in treatment costs for the over-70s.
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