{"id":616590,"date":"2026-09-30T18:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T18:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/616590\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T18:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T18:00:12","slug":"japans-health-cost-caps-rise-widening-gaps-between-insurers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/616590\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan\u2019s health cost caps rise, widening gaps between insurers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Japan\u2019s health care system is often held up abroad as a model of universal coverage.<\/p>\n<p>But universal does not mean uniform: patients undergoing the same expensive treatment can pay very different amounts out-of-pocket depending on which insurer they belong to \u2014 and the government\u2019s latest reform will widen the gap.<\/p>\n<p>Under the high-cost medical expense benefit system, a ceiling is placed on the amount patients must shoulder themselves when they face large bills for surgery or other treatment, with public health insurance covering the remainder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan\u2019s health care system is often held up abroad as a model of universal coverage. But universal does&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[15453,134,527,3193,33716,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-616590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-elderly","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-medicine","tag-national-health-care","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}