The health care sector has become a major component of the contemporary economies of Japan and the United States. It absorbs significant portions of the GDP in both countries, and places increasing stress on private, government, and corporate budgets. With so much at stake, arrangements for...

Recent data show wide disparity between Japan and the United States in the effectiveness of their health care systems. Japan spends close to the lowest percentage of its gross domestic product on health care among OECD countries, the United States spends the highest, yet life expectancies in...

This book integrates the fundamentals of quantitative significance, using existing estimates of the elasticities of demand for tax, health insurance, and medical services in a static microsimulation model. It serves as a guide to the financial and social basics of health insurance and provides...