C. Medical Service
For those aged 70 and over, a special arrangement has been made to reduce the charge for medical services provided by public sickness insurance. Our public sickness insurance covers 80% of hospital charge and 70% of outpatient service of an older person when he/she is a dependent of the insured. For retired older persons who do not have income other than public pensions, however, these charges (20-30%) are sometimes difficult to bear. To cope with this problem, the Law for Health and Medical Services for the elderly of 1982 stipulates that the elderly aged 70 and over are required to pay only a small fixed amount of charge. In some regions, like Tokyo, the age limit has been lowered to 65. It can be said that in Japan, adequate medical services are available to all senior citizens regardless of the amount of income.
D. Health Check Service
The Law for Health and Medical Services for the Elderly of 1982 requires all local governments to have a Health Check Service for their citizens aged 40 and over, which is free of charge or with only moderate fees. For uterine and breast cancer examinations, the age limit is lowered to 30 years of age. All important medical examinations are included in the program. In general, local governments provide health check services annually for older persons aged 60 and over. For middle-aged persons between 40-59, most of the local governments provide health check services about once every five years. Incidentally, all enterprises employing a certain number of persons (including not-for-profit agencies) are required to provide annual health check services for their employees. Therefore, generally speaking, the local governments only provide their health check service to self-employed persons and unemployed persons, including housewives of the employed.
