War and Health Insurance Policy in Japan and the United States: World War II to Postwar Reconstruction - Hardcover

"Daring, relevant and an excellent an excellent commencement within the English language literature on the origins of the Japanese welfare state... Beyond contributing substantively to the literature by covering hitherto uncharted terrain, Yamagishi's claims about the mechanisms underlying war-period health policy change deserve closer scrutiny and will be of interest to a broad audience."

"Historical investigation and international comparative analysis are two major approaches among the forces in the field, and Takakazu Yamagishi's War and Health Insurance Policy in Japan and the United States: World War II to Postwar Reconstruction has combined those two methodologies to produce a sharply focused, beautifully constructed, and clearly argued explanation of this historical making of the systems or medical insurance in Japan and the United States... Yamagishi has produced a wonderful book... The book will serve as one of the best introductions to the making of health care policies in the two countries and as a starting point to develop a more inclusive account of the paths to the different medical systems in two countries that face each other across the Pacific."

World War II forced extensive and comprehensive social and political changes on nations across the globe. This comparative examination of health insurance in the United States and Japan during and after the war explores how World War II shaped the health care systems of both countries.

To compare the development of health insurance in the two countries, Takakazu Yamagishi discusses the impact of total war on four factors: political structure, interest group politics, political culture, and policy feedback. During World War II, the U.S. and Japanese governments realized that healthy soldiers, workers, mothers, and children were vital to national survival. While both countries adopted new, expansive national insurance policies as part of their mobilization efforts, they approached doing so in different ways and achieved near-opposite results. In the United States, private insurance became the predominant means of insuring people, save for a few government-run programs. Japan, meanwhile, created a near-universal, public insurance system. After the war, their different policy paths were consolidated. Yamagishi argues that these disparate outcomes were the result of each nation’s respective war experience. He looks closely at postwar Japan and investigates how political struggles between the American occupation authority and U.S. domestic forces, such as the American Medical Association, helped solidify the existing Japanese health insurance system.

Original and tightly argued, this volume makes a strong case for treating total war as a central factor in understanding how the health insurance systems of the two nations grew, while bearing in mind the dual nature of government intervention―however slight―in health care. Those interested in debates about health care in Japan, the United States, and other countries, and especially scholars of comparative political development, will appreciate and learn from Yamagishi’s study.