The Japanese government sought to put in place a revised “Expensive Medical Expenditure” (EME) program, under which the National Health Insurance pays the medical expenditures of the insured beyond a predetermined monthly limit. For example, the mothly limit for a household over 6.9 million in annual income is set at 252,000 yen plus 1 percent of part of the total medical expenditures. This is enormously helpful especially for those taking new expensive pharmaceuticals. However because of the tight fiscal outlook, the MHLW has to raise the monthly limit by about 10 to 15 percent, and, naturally, caused an uproar in the Diet and in the media.
One reason they are not successful yet is that they failed to articulate the pros and cons of the revision. For example, most readers will not be able to understand if the amount “252,600” is annual or monthly in the figure above. They also calculated the “insurance premium reductions” from the above, without defining what the “reductions” are. (The annual premiums do not change, and it only means that the average beneifts/payouts from the NHI will decrease.)
The Ministry used to be quite meticulous in preparing images like above, but either their expertise is lost, or they no longer consider policy implications carefully.