Japan is a sign of what is to come for the United States on many things.

In this case the Japanese people are suffering from a special subsidy system designed to reduce costs for people to visit Emergency Rooms. In the quest to make access easier they, like the United States is now doing, made the mistake that people would not abuse the system, which is actually the problem. People are showing up for minor issues and are crowding out emergency rooms. Patients with life threatening conditions are being turned away from hospitals for 'no beds' in emergency rooms. The problem is actually costing people their lives.

The problem is that with the way the system is people have no incentive to not go to the ER, and hospitals have no incentive to turn them away, and the Government is on the hook for it all. If people had their own funds, and were responsible for said funds, they would prove far more caring about how they were spent.