notes about comparing long-term care expenditures across countries; comment on “financing long-term care: lessons from japan”

The comparison of longterm care (ltc) expenditures is a difficult task. national ltc systems differ widely in terms of eligibility criteria, level of benefits, institutional variety and regional heterogeneity. in this commentary i will first give some general remarks on cross country comparisons. then i discuss the role of the informal sector which is the most important pillar of all ltc systems. i conclude with some background on current developments in germany. different from japan germany is extending its ltc insurance instead of containing costs.