Luckily I had great health insurance in the states so my max out of pocket was $0 and I was able to go to the best hospitals without any thought. The hospitals here are not as good for severe surgeries (I fly back to the states for those) or cancer (survival rates are lower).

But for those that are cost-conscious, Japan is better on average.

​

And I agree that the Japanese covid numbers don't add up. I used to work for one of the largest EHR companies in the world and we made it incredibly easy to export data for governments and organizations that would help out things like counting covid statistics. Japan still uses fax and handwritten doctor's notes (we were unable to expand into the Japanese market) which makes reporting for things like this incredibly difficult. Also the privacy laws here are very archaic and inhibit the sharing of data like this especially in smaller communities where giving an age range and covid positive of a patient would make it easy to identify the subject.