The opinion of former chief of the Department of Health & Social Welfare, on the systems of long-term care, from the Newspapers, translated…
The Health Insurance plans available to every citizen here received great commands internationally, but, the long-term care systems here, didn’t get enough spotlight, and this, would be something we should, focus on, working towards in the future.
The Three Trends in Long-Term Care Globally
There are currently, three directions of where the money for long-term care programs in various countries came from. The first kind is the taxing of the citizen like in Norway and other northern European nations, because the taxes are high, there’s sufficient funds, and therefore, the long-term care systems were more complete. The second is the long-term care insurances, the most representative is the nurse’s care insurances of Japan; those similar include Korea, Germany, and the long-term care programs of the Netherlands. The third type, is the long-term care commercial insurance policies like in the U.S., with the high qualities, but, very pricy, and, most of the long-term care systems in the world were based off of the American model, and so, everybody needed to take from the U.S.’s examples.
In the past, although there were many visitors from other Asian countries here to see the long-term care programs, they’re not here to see how the system works, but how the care was provided, for instance, the programs in Shuanlien, Changgang nursing home’s way of doing things.
Taiwan is Lagging Behind on the Coverage of Long-Term Care
But the coverage of long-term care in Taiwan, had fallen behind, globally, or rather, it’s lagging behind in its Asian peers. The Japanese system of long-term care had been up and running for seventeen years, Korea, for eight; and, there is, only, a quarter of the programs offering the needed care, based off of the plans of Long-Term Care 2.0, by the end of the second decade, it can only look after the needs of HALF of the elderly in the population.
On the other hand, there were, over 200,000 Taiwanese elderly who required long-term care who were looked after by the foreign care providers, and, the foreign workers are on the increase, which is rare, compared to the rest of the world, it’s not good for the image of this country, and, in the future, with the increase in coverage, hopefully, we can’t, reduce the number of foreign nurse’s aides that were needed in this country.
The Integration of Long-Term Care Programs Needs to Hasten Up to Catch Up to the Rest of the World’s
A lot of the country are pushing forth for the combination of medical and long-term care programs, and by merging the two, we can reduce the repeated medical treatments, to help speed up the rate of the patients’ recovery time, and reducing the costs.
Britain had first proposed the strengthening of the middle stages care, to focus on the medical coverage needs, and life, the U.S. developed the progressive active care program, and the complete elderly care measures; and, Japan’s system of healthcare hadn’t yet combined the programs with the long-term care programs, it’s suffering the losses right now, and they’d planned, to push forth the fuller systems of long-term care by 2025; and in China, there were the combined system of living and medical treatment programs, with over a dozen locations starting up right now.
The all-citizen healthcare plans that Taiwan had set up was once, a role model for the rest of the world; and yet, in the long-term care program developments of the rest of the world, Taiwan should also, follow the guidelines of WHO, to integrate the system of long-term care programs, to speed up, to catch up to the rest of the world, so our long-term care policies, can be taken as an example by the rest of the world.
And so, the system of long-term care is lacking, because it’s only in these past few years, that this concept had, surfaced, because before, people didn’t KNOW of the numerous problems that the elderly population is faced with this for whatever reasons there may have been, and now, Taiwan is lagging behind, and, is trying to catch up to the rest of the world.
Life, the Obstacle Course 