Overview
- Japan’s health ministry is in final adjustments to require residents of residential-type fee-charging nursing homes to pay part of the cost to create care plans.
- The government plans to decide the care-plan change by year-end following discussions with ruling party members and Social Security Council subcommittees.
- Roughly 20,000 such facilities have capacity for about 630,000 people, and which homes would be subject to charges remains under consideration.
- Separately on Dec. 8, the ministry presented a high-cost medical expense reform to experts that would raise outpatient cost-sharing for those 70 and over while maintaining the multiple-occurrence relief and current caps for long-term treatment patients.
- The medical expense plan would refine income-based caps and add an annual out-of-pocket ceiling, with phased rollout starting next summer and exact thresholds to be set during the 2026 budget process.