The goals of universal health coverage (UHC) are to ensure that all people can access quality health services, to safeguard all people from public health risks, and to protect all people from impoverishment due to illness, whether from out-of-pocket payments for health care or loss of income...

Background: Cost sharing, including copayment and coinsurance, is often used to contain medical expenditure by decreasing unnecessary or excessive use of healthcare resources. Previous studies in Japan have reported the effects of a coinsurance rate reduction for healthcare from 30 to 10% on the...

Westernizing medicine -- Reacting to deteriorating health -- Improving people's health for war -- Reforming health care with the United States -- Achieving universal health insurance -- Consolidating universal health insurance -- Making universal health insurance survive -- Japanese health care...