抄録
A vague negative feeling is wide-spreading for the future of the Long term care insurance (LTCI) in Japan. The long lasting economic slump has made employment of younger generation unstable, which becomes an important reason of negative feeling among them for the sustainability of social security system. On the other hand, the aged also confronts the increase of LTCI premium because of increase in LTCI services consumption. The aged people feel the amount and quality of services might be insufficient compared with their financial contribution. The Japanese LTCI is not formulated to cover all care needs that the frail elderly have, even though the Japanese LTCI scheme offers a wider range of services compared with that of other countries. Too much dependency on the LTCI scheme among the citizen, the providers and governments must re-consider. If we want to realize an active aged society, we have to construct an appropriate mix of self-help, mutual assistance and public assistance. This requires for all citizen to have some responsibility for their community as some frontier programs teach us. The dependency prevention program that was introduced by the 2006 LTCI reform, must be re-considered as a tool for community movement.
