Abstract
A public long-term care insurance program has been introduced to Japan in April of the year 2000. Now Japan is the third country of establishing public long-term care insurance system after the Netherlands and Germany. However, the Japanese program has not been well prepared, and several fundamental issues are remained. These include funding problem, inadequate benefits, insufficient quality and quantity of services provided, unclear eligibility criteria, and so on. This paper describes an outline of the public long-term care insurance program and discusses issues concering the determination of eligibility.
