Globally, national policies regarding long-term care are a mixture of “embedded” policies and trans-national trends. Health and related long-term care policies are “embedded” in situations that are unique to specific countries. The specific contexts of such policies include many aspects such as demographic characteristics, socio-cultural factors, governmental organization and political circumstances. These factors create existential limits to choices to some extent that are termed “path dependency” or “sunken costs.” Such path dependency shapes the trajectory of emerging health and related long-term care policies. Nevertheless, in many respects, long-term care policies in industrial/post industrial countries face similar problems arising from the aging of populations, biomedical and medical technological advances, as well as relatively limited “options” in seeking to deal with specific issues. Thus, globally nations seek similar goals such as social equity and access, quality of care and cost/benefit efficiency. Regarding the need for cost/benefit efficiency, a Swiss federal official in 2008 noted that long-term care is increasingly a significant factor regarding health care costs. He observed that: “Financing of long term care ... [forms] a growing pressure on public finances and tends to overload the financial burden of health insurance some projections indicate a growth of 77 % of the long term care costs between 2000 and 2040 [will be due to] population aging”. In the process of seeking the goals we have noted globally policy learning and the transfer of ideas occurs between countries. Such articles are accepeted to publish in Journal of Aging and Geriatric Medicine.

With regards

Managing Editor

Journal of Aging and Geriatric Medicine

40 Bloomsbury Way, Lower Ground Floor, London, United Kingdom

gerontol@scitecjournals.com