Economic scale of utilization of radiation (3): medicine. Comparison between Japan and the U.S.A

Our previous study revealed that the use of radiological technology in medicine was spreading in Japan. For example, in 1997, the economic scale was about 10b$=121yen) corresponding to 4% of the national health expenditures (240b$) or 0.24% of the nominal GDP (gross domestic products, 4,231b$). This time, the economic scale was compared between Japan and the U.S.A. within limited parameters. (1) For the TDHE (total domestic health expenditures) base, it was 987b$ in the U.S.A. and 279b$ in Japan, implying that the American people spent rather much money for their health. (2) For the economic scale estimated by studying parameters (ESP), approximately 49b$ for the U.S.A. and 12b$ for Japan. ESP in the former is large in magnitude by a factor of 4, implying that U.S.A. people do not hesitate to use radiological technologies for curing their diseases. This tendency was cleary observed by the expenditures on prostate cancer and the FDG-PET and so on. (3) The ratio between ESP and GDP within the scope of this study was 0.6% for the U.S.A. and 0.3% for Japan. The use of medical radiology may be enlarged in the future due to its high quality of life (QDL). (author)