Abstract - Caring for the elderly - Challenges for Taiwan

Population aging is an imminent challenge commonly faced by many countries as a result of declining fertility rate and rising life expectancy. In 2012, there were 2.6 million population aged 65 and over in Taiwan, representing 11.2% of the total population. Essentially, Taiwan's population has aged in a rather compressed timeframe and the population proportion of aged 65 and above is projected to rise to 16.1% in 2020 and to 36.5% in 2050. One of the major challenges encountered by aging/aged society is the provision of long-term care services to the elderly and the financing of such services. Taiwan is no exception and the government has promulgated a 10-year long-term care plan for the disadvantaged elderly in 2007. In addition, various proposals for long-term care insurance have been developed and discussed since the new administration took office in 2008. This presentation aims to first provide an assessment of the 10-year long-term care plan and the long-term care insurance proposal, and finally concludes with a discussion on the challenges ahead.

About the Speaker - Prof Jui-fen Rachel Lu

Jui-fen Rachel Lu, Sc.D., is a Professor in the Department of Health Care Management, at Chang Gung University (CGU) in Taiwan, where she teaches comparative health systems, health economics, and health care financing and has served as department chair (2000-2004), Associate Dean (2009-2010) and Dean of College of Management (2010-2013). She earned her B.S. from National Taiwan University, and her M.S. and Sc.D. from Harvard University, and she was also a Takemi Fellow at Harvard (2004-2005) and is an Honorary Professor at Hong Kong University (2007-2014), a guest professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (2010-2013), and an adjunct professor at Xi'an Jiaotong University (2011-2014) in China. Her devotion to teaching driven by her firm belief in the value of education and investment in human minds was recognized by the Award of Excellence in Teaching conferred by CGU in both 2002 and 2013. Her research focuses on 1) the equity issues of the health care system; 2) impact of the NHI program on health care market and household consumption patterns; 3) comparative health systems in Asia-Pacific region. She is a long-time and active member of Equitap (Equity in Asia-Pacific Health Systems) research network and is currently the coordinator for the catastrophic payment component of Equitap II research project which involves 21 country teams and is jointly funded by IDRC, AusAID, and ADB. Professor Lu has also been appointed to serve as a member on various government committees dealing with health care issues in Taiwan, such as National Health Insurance Supervisory Committee (DOH), Hospital Management Committee (DOH), and Hospital Global Budget Payment Committee (BNHI), etc. Dr. Lu received the Minister Wang Jin Naw Memorial Award for Best Paper in Health Care Management presented by Kimma Chang Foundation in 2002 and was the recipient of IBM Faculty Award in 2009. Prof. Lu is also the founding and current vice-president of Taiwan Society of Health Economics since its inauguration in 2008.