Does the planned long-term care policy in Taiwan meet the needs of people with disabilities?

Abstract

The long-term care (LTC) insurance policy will be enacted in Taiwan. Under the proposed policy, people with disabilities will have priority in receiving insurance. The aim of this study was to compare the functional statuses of 3 disability groups and to investigate the coverage provided by the planned LTC insurance in Taiwan. A cross-sectional study was conducted in this study to fulfill this research goal. There were 3239 subjects with physical, sensory, or intellectual disabilities from the Disability Eligibility System during September 2011 and July 2012. The World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 - 36-item version (WHODAS 2.0)--traditional Chinese version was used to assess their functional statuses. Significant differences in all of the domain scores and summary scores of the WHODAS 2.0 were determined after adjusting for age among the 3 groups. People with physical or sensory disabilities exhibited the most drastic differences in the domain of daily living, and people with intellectual disabilities exhibited major differences in the cognition domain. After matching the planned coverage services, we determined that the planned LTC insurance does not meet the diverse needs of people with disabilities. In particular, social participation and a sense of security and satisfaction regarding the psychological aspects of having a disability must be considered in LTC insurance policies.

Keywords: Disability; Functional evaluation; Long-term care insurance; World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule II (WHODAS 2.0).