노인장기요양보험제도의 문제점과 개선방안에 관한 연구

Most of the developed countries in the world now are responding and coming up with various policies regarding social welfare within their own countries because of the increase in the aging population. Through the rapid industrialization process, social changes have occurred while birth and death rates have dropped drastically. With this turn of events, the absolute and relative rate of the aging population have sharply increased and one of the world’s fastest aging phenomenon is happening in Korea. This phenomenon has resulted in intensifying the number of elderly people on a daily basis who find it difficult to maintain normal lives because they are suffering diseases such as dementia and strokes. As such, the social dangers followed by the aforementioned situation has also risen in multitudes. This kind of social and dangerous structure will inevitably continue on a long-term basis in a variety of ways. The long-term care issue of the elderly followed by the social dangers of the aging society is especially serious along with the growth in medical costs and this is not just a matter of one family taking care of its own senior member. In fact, the magnitude of the problem is not in single units, but is in imperative need of the attention of the state in a much grander scale and it is indeed a desperate situation where the society must resolve this matter urgently. Germany has already experienced these dangers of the social aging phenomenon and is responding by enacting a kind of a social insurance method care policy based on the principles of social solidarity to fight against the rapid increase of the elderly people who need long term care through the socialization of the long term care protection system. Japan is also countering the demand for long term care for the rapidly surging number of the elderly population by enacting the long term care insurance system which has been derived from the social insurance principle and social solidarity which is a decentralized tendency social welfare system. Under this system, it places the basic local autonomies, the municipalities of Japan, to be the decisive policymakers in the legal and official capacity. At this point, we cannot help but take a closer look at the results and problems of Korea’s long-term care insurance system for the elderly people which has been in execution for the past 8 years since its enaction. It is true that there have been various successes with the drastic expansion in benefits in terms of modification of the classification level of the elderly in their access to the long term care but it is also true that many problems have been surfacing within the system due to the social changes. Therefore, attempts have been made in this paper to come up with a few improvement plans by rooting out the problems and coming up with focal issues by comparatively analyzing the systems of Germany and Japan which are both continuously carrying out reforms. First, a solution must be sought out for the problem of the resource procurement method. Second, the problem of lack of information related to the care system must be actively specificized. These kinds of reforms will be the path to the maintenance and improvement of the system through the development and provision of a customer centered service. There will also be a great significance in this in terms of responding actively to the social dangers of the ever aging society.