{"id":702946,"date":"2026-05-29T20:52:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T20:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/702946\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T20:52:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T20:52:12","slug":"japan-passes-bill-to-raise-co-payments-for-prescription-drugs-similar-to-otc-counterparts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/702946\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan passes bill to raise co-payments for prescription drugs similar to OTC counterparts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Japan on Friday passed legislation to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/news\/2026\/05\/15\/japan\/prescription-drugs-additional-payments\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">raise co-payments<\/a> for prescription medicines with ingredients and effects similar to over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, in a bid to curb insurance premium hikes for the working population.<\/p>\n<p>The bill to reform the nation\u2019s healthcare insurance system, which passed by a majority vote in the Upper House\u2019s plenary session, would also make costs associated with childbirth entirely covered by public health insurance.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, standard deliveries are not covered by public health insurance, and women who give birth are granted a one-time allowance of \u00a5500,000 ($3,130) per child. But the actual cost of child delivery varies among hospitals, making the lump-sum payment often insufficient.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan on Friday passed legislation to raise co-payments for prescription medicines with ingredients and effects similar to over-the-counter&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":702947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[64,63,1298,137,4631,490,1679,62062,4334,2169],"class_list":["post-702946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-diet","tag-health","tag-insurance","tag-medication","tag-medicine","tag-national-health-care","tag-pharmaceuticals","tag-pregnancy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=702946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/702947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=702946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=702946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=702946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}