If we want to understand the true burden of health entitlements, we need to account for not only what we spent on them directly, but also the fair share of net interest payments on the nationaldebt attributable to these same entitlements.
Just to recap the analysis in the previous post, over the past 20 years from FY1990 to FY2011 outstanding national and local government debt grew by JPY 500 trillion, 127.8 percent of GDP on a net basis (229.1 percent on gross), the highest among OECD countries by far.