The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare plans to begin subsidizing costs for municipalities that run simplified saliva tests to screen for periodontal (gum) disease, starting in fiscal year 2027. The goal is to let anyone who wants one get tested every year, raising the share of people who’ve had a dental checkup within the past year to 95% by fiscal 2035. The ministry’s fiscal 2027 budget request includes 9.3 billion yen for related costs. As of 2024, 40% of people had not had a dental checkup in the past year. On 5ch, some welcomed the move, citing links between periodontal disease and heart attacks or Alzheimer’s, while the thread also branched into gripes about the sheer number of dental clinics and how healthcare spending gets allocated, debates over fluoridating tap water, and even how to properly use an electric toothbrush — a mix of support, skepticism, and tangents.
Starting in fiscal year 2027, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare will subsidize the costs municipalities need to run simplified saliva tests for periodontal disease, making it possible for anyone who wants one to get tested every year. The aim is to raise the share of people who’ve had a dental checkup within the past year to 95% by fiscal 2035.
In its fiscal 2027 budget request, the ministry earmarked 9.3 billion yen to move the “Dental Checkups for All Citizens” initiative forward, positioning it as a key measure in its “proactive preventive medicine” push to extend healthy life expectancy. As of 2024, 40% of people had not had a dental checkup within the past year.
The ministry is considering formally establishing the simplified test as a program under the Health Promotion Act starting in fiscal 2028. It also plans to shorten the interval for periodontal disease checkups — where dentists examine teeth and surrounding tissue at dental clinics — from every ten years to every five.
Source: nikkei.com / Read the original article here
They're paying for the checkup — nobody said they'd cover the treatment too.
Don't they brush their teeth?
Are Japanese people just unclean?
And their teeth are crooked too, right?
Aren't there way too many dentists?
Is Japan's dental technology just behind the times?
Is that why Japanese people are riddled with cavities?
In the US and South America, tap water has fluoride in it, so people don't get cavities as much.
Just a little trivia for you.
Hybrid ceramic crowns are already covered by insurance now.
The baby boomer generation really does smell. And they block the aisles too. What is going on with those people?
Realistically, you have to go get your tartar removed every three months or it's hopeless.
Depends how you use it. I use a Panasonic Doltz and my dental hygienist always compliments me on it. They check with the red plaque-disclosing solution every time, and it comes back perfect.
I use floss, interdental brushes, and mouthwash on top of the electric toothbrush.
These days insurance treatment really pushes you toward resin fillings instead, lol.
Silver fillings run at a loss, so nobody's actually benefiting.
Those white fillings these days (resin, I guess?) are seriously hard. I thought my filling had chipped, but it turned out to be my actual tooth — gave me a scare.
Then you wouldn't lose your teeth down the road, and dentures wouldn't even be a worry.
Also, apparently too much citrus, vinegared food, or sports drinks can dissolve your teeth too.
"Teeth dissolving," "bones dissolving" — that was a trending scare back in my parents' generation. How old even are you, lol
Well, weather plays a role too, but if it's scientifically proven to reduce cavities, you'd think they'd just do it.
The fact that they don't suggests some group is using people's health for profit — that's basically a developing-country move. At the very least, if they actually cared about the public, you'd expect them to inform people about it.
Sure, it was only tested in some places, but since it's proven to reduce cavities, the US and South American countries have adopted it. Whether a country does this or not is basically a baseline test of how trustworthy it is.
Isn't that too often?
Though I haven't been in three years since COVID started.
Mine's always been every six months, and it's just one round of tartar removal each time.
I get regular checkups.
There's no real cure for periodontal disease anyway. Cleanings just indirectly support your own brushing, that's about it.
In most cases it's really just that your immune system starts losing the fight against the bacteria as you age. Old people just have smelly, unclean mouths — that's how it goes.
Dentists are disappearing left and right, so it's only going to get harder to book an appointment from here.
Appointments really have gotten hard to get lately. If you cancel one, you can't get back in for another two months — it's rough.
There's no full cure, no. But you can definitely keep your teeth longer, and it pays off once you're older.
Regenerative medicine. There are out-of-pocket drugs with a track record, and insurance-covered drugs that come with strict eligibility conditions.
Go to a periodontal specialist or the conservative dentistry department at a university hospital for flap surgery with Emdogain or Regroth-type treatments, and lately Tohoku University's come up with a killer weapon called Blue Radical — if you've got the money, it's curable.
Background and Talking Points on This Topic
“Dental Checkups for All Citizens” is a goal the government has pushed as policy in recent years, and this saliva-test subsidy is one concrete step toward it. The saliva test is strictly a simple screening tool, and the article itself doesn’t make clear whether the program guarantees follow-up treatment or visits for people who test positive — worth noting caution here, as post #44 points out. In the thread, opinions clashed over the sheer number of dental clinics and how healthcare spending is allocated, but as the article notes, dental costs make up less than 10% of Japan’s total medical spending. Also, the difficulty of getting dental appointments raised from post #169 onward could become a real design problem if expanding who gets checkups increases demand faster than the treatment side can keep up. The arguments over fluoridation reflect genuine differences in policy from country to country, but it’s worth keeping in mind that the thread’s sweeping judgments don’t necessarily add up to a fair verdict on the program as a whole.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (News Express+) thread “Health Ministry Aiming for “Dental Checkups for All Citizens,” to Subsidize Saliva-Based Periodontal Tests.”
