08.08.2011                      08.Aw-Elul, 5771

Gesundheitswesen:

Major plan to expand geriatric care goes to Knesset

Reform would simplify bureaucracy and head off "tsunami of elderly" in coming decades.

A plan conceived over the past year to raise health taxes by 0.5 percentage points or alternatively for the Treasury to increase allocations to reform geriatric nursing services and financing will be presented as a government bill by the Health Ministry to the Knesset during its winter session.
The bill, if passed and implemented gradually, would relieve the heavy costs to the middle and lower classes of caring for the sick and disabled elderly, and reduce red tape that requires families to go to half-a-dozen authorities to get help. Instead, the Health Ministry and the public health funds would take over responsibility for supervising and carrying out geriatric nursing care in hospitals and in the community….