Is There Any Good News for Population Aging: A Global Perspective
Countries around the world face a series of challenges arising from population aging, including rising cost for health care in general and long-term care in particular. These challenges often make health economics seem a “dismal science” foretelling fiscal difficulties in aging societies. It is important to explore whether technological change in the health sector can help countries to improve fiscal sustainability of health and long-term care commitments in light of aging populations. This session aims to investigate the economics of innovation and long-term care in aging societies, focusing specifically on three countries: the United States, Japan and Taiwan. The first paper estimates the effects of a hypothetical medical intervention that delays the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease on the magnitude of the population with AD, costs of the disease and value of this treatment in the United States. The second paper estimates the Future Elderly Model for Japan, a demographic and economic Markov micro simulation model that projects the future health conditions and functional status of the elderly population in order to estimate their future demand for health care and long term care spending. The third paper uses Taiwan's NHI insurance claims data to investigate whether innovation in health care delivery by integrating acute care and long-term care into one system has any efficiency gain in terms of saving health care costs and improving health outcomes.