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Abstract
In the past few decades, Taiwan population distribution in modern society has been rapidly increased in elder and disabled segments. During this transforming process, the illness patterns of population are also inevitably shifted toward chronic and chronic dysfunction types of diseases. Thus, the demands of Taiwan long-term care will grow intensively and is becoming one of the most significant topics of social welfare and health care in the future.
Nevertheless, the investment in long-term care sector is currently still very limited. There are only two government systems in Taiwan to provide relevant resources. One is Taiwan Social Welfare Departments that provide agency and household types of rescue cares for mid- or low-income families. The other is Taiwan National Health Insurance that provides household service supplements for heavily dysfunction patients. However, both of them are very restricted in the coverage scopes and lack of sufficient service manpower and facilities. As a consequence, the shortages transform the heavy responsibilities of the long-term care back into the financial and mental burdens of each individual and family in the society. Given the rapid aging speed of Taiwan population, if we cannot address efficiently for all above mentioned issues, it will be difficult to
meet the future long-term care needs.
Today, in Taiwan, National Health Insurance has been implemented and so is National Pension Plan. The missing part of long-term care system should be pushed into reality to complete the full-fledged services of national security and care systems.
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