What about health insurance for smoking cessation?
If you use a medical institution such as a non-smoking outpatient clinic, you can treat nicotine addiction at a low price because health insurance is applied. This is due to the fact that tobacco addiction has been officially considered a disease since 2006.
Some argue that national tax-funded health insurance should be used to treat nicotine addiction rather than those suffering from “serious” illnesses, but that’s a mistake.
The more you continue to smoke and get lung cancer, the greater the social loss. Treatment of lung cancer costs about 500,000 to 1 million yen per person, and in most cases 2 million yen. Most of it is covered by health insurance, which increases the cost of health care in the country. On the other hand, non-smoking outpatients cost around tens of thousands of yen.
In other words, smoking cessation outpatients can reduce the high cost of treatment in the future, which is good for both the country and individuals.