On NPR

Last week on NPR’s, All Things Considered, that Japan has the longest life expectancy on Earth. Partly due to healthy diet and exercise, but many Japanese give credit to the countries Universal Health Care System.

Their system works like this:

Everyone is required to get health insurance; the government gets the bill from those who are too poor.

Every citizen is covered and they are able to get cheap health care, anywhere, anytime.

From the online version of the radio show:

“This is how Japan keeps cost so low. The Japanese Health Ministry tightly controls the price of health care down to the smallest detail. Every two years, the health care industry and the health ministry negotiate a fixed price for every procedure and every drug.”

Another plus of this system is that premiums are set around $280 a month for the average Japanese family, a lot less than Americans pay. And Japan's employers pick up at least half of that. If you lose your job, you keep your health insurance.

The only problem the Japanese have seen with this system is that hospitals are starting to go in the red. Since it only costs a Japanese citizen $10 a night to stay in a hospital, the hospitals are losing a lot of money.

This problem is easily fixable though. The Japanese government could just give back what the hospitals are losing, since there government pays nearly 1/3 of what the American government pays for health care.

You can read the article and listen to the radio broadcast here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89626309