Changing social burden of Japan’s three major diseases including Long-term Care due to aging

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to clarify the social burden of Japan’s three major diseases including Long-term Care (LTC) burden. Design/methodology/approach – A modification of the Cost of Illness (COI)—the Comprehensive-COI (C-COI) was utilized to estimate three major diseases: cancer, heart disease, and cerebrovascular diseases (CVD). The C-COI consists of five parts: medical direct cost, morbidity cost, mortality cost, formal LTC cost and informal LTC cost. The latter was calculated by two approaches: opportunity cost approach (OC) and replacement approach (RA), which assumed that informal caregivers were substituted by paid caregivers. Findings – The C-COI of cancer, heart disease and CVD in 2017 amounted to 10.5 trillion JPY, 5.2 trillion JPY, and 6.7 trillion JPY, respectively (110 JPY= 1 US$). The mortality cost was preponderant for cancer (61 percent) and heart disease (47.9 percent); while the informal LTC cost was preponderant for CVD (27.5 percent). The informal LTC cost of the CVD in OC amounted to 1.8 trillion JPY; while the RA amounted to 3.0 trillion JPY. Social implications – The LTC burden accounted for a significant proportion of the social burden of chronic diseases. The informal care was maintained by unsustainable structures such as the elderly providing care for the elderly. This result can affect health policy decisions. Originality/value – The C-COI is more appropriate for estimating the social burden of chronic diseases including the LTC burden and can be calculated using governmental statistics.

Keywords

• aging
• health economics
• health policy
• long-term care
• cost of illness
• japan