[garcia3441]

Japanese woman dies searching for care - Yahoo! News

The latest case underscores Japan's health care woes, in part created by a shortage of doctors in the country's rapidly aging society. Critics say long working hours and a government policy change several years ago to keep the number of doctors down are to blame.

[ohio_eric]

That is just awful.

[Jongpil Yun]

Critics say long working hours and a government policy change several years ago to keep the number of doctors down are to blame.

Long working hours are the norm, especially for hospital docs, who often nap in empty rooms during 36+ hour shifts, but the second part? Free market allocation > government quotas. I'm guessing the number of doctors would be quite a sticky variable, what with the 8 year lag times between enrollment and graduation, but still. From what I recall (Naren's gonna jump in and correct me on this I'm sure) most of Japan's best students go to Tokyo University to become econ/law majors to get cushy government jobs instead of the biological sciences.

[Apophis]

it's just sick situation

[Born_Headless]

Also, from the article

Last year, a pregnant woman in western Japan died after being refused admission by about 20 hospitals that said they were full.

Just sad.

[Buzz762]

It'll be interesting to see where health care in the US is in 10-20 years. I suspect we may start seeing articles such as this taking place here. Most of you probably don't realize it or think about it but hospitals, particularly the ED, are usually ridiculously understaffed with too few doctors, nurses, etc. to go around. The article mentioned something about a law keeping the number of doctors down? That just seems asinine to me, but as I don't live in japan, I don't know too much about their health care system.

The population here is aging quickly, but I'm not quite sure about Japan's population. It's a sad situation, but I think we'll be seeing more and more of this in the years to come unless we get a massive flood of people moving over to medical treatment based careers. I emphasize the treatment part because I know a TON of people that are pursuing medical careers that have absolutely nothing to do with patient treatment because they don't like the blood, shit, puke, or whatever else. That's fine, but billing a dead person doesn't tend to work too well.

[Aaron]

As Human population goes up, health care goes down, im sorry to sound rude and cruel but we are starting to overpopulate the planet, but thats why we have climate change.

[Jongpil Yun]

Originally Posted by Aaron

As Human population goes up, health care goes down, im sorry to sound rude and cruel but we are starting to overpopulate the planet, but thats why we have climate change.

You've got it completely backwards. For the most part, the more people there are, and the more dense populations are, the more efficient everything becomes. Same goes for healthcare. I don't know what fucked up government intervention is driving the Japanese's shitty healthcare system, but the natural state of things is for a densely populated city to be more efficient in everything than a rural town.