Dependencia: financiacion public-privada y sostenibilidad

We know that in the next decades there will be a huge increase in the numbers of people requiring long-term care, which will be a challenge to most long-term care systems. There are three key ways to respond to this challenge: the first is to moderate future need for care, through finding ways to moderate or even reduce the need for long-term care. The second would require an increase in the efficiency of care systems, so that the resources that are available are used to achieve as much improvement as possible in the wellbeing of people with care needs. Even if we are reasonably successful at these first two ways, it will still be inevitable that we will need to use more resources to finance long-term care in the near future. This article reviews the main ways in which long-term care can be financed, including informal care, private income and savings, private insurance, social security and taxation. It also explores the possibilities for public-private partnerships in the financing of long-term care.