18 February 2019 - Japanese doctor Yasushi Goto remembers prescribing the cancer drug Opdivo to an octogenarian and wondering whether taxpayers might object to helping fund treatment, which at the time cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, for patients in their twilight years.

Japanese have easy access to new medicines, whose prices are decided by the government and subsidized by the country's public health insurance system.

But that may change. Japan, confronted with the ballooning cost of caring for an ageing population, is introducing a cost-effectiveness test for drugs as a means of capping prices.

Read Asahi Shimbun article