Social Security reforms in Japan.

With these laws, the Japanese government raised patient copayments for health care, initiated a preventive health program to monitor the physical well-being of persons over age 40, and introduced resource pooling among all health programs to cover expenditures for the elderly. It also realigned public pension programs to inaugurate a two-tiered system for the nation’s working population, and make substantial benefit cuts in future pension payments. Taken together, these measures are significant because they represent concerted changes in the structure, financing, and benefit levels of the country’s health and pension insurance programs. They also mark a turning point in the history of Japanese social security from expanding programs and rising benefit levels to a period of retrenchment. What Japan has done is to reassess its health and pension systems in toto, and adjust them to changing social and economic conditions. As public programs