Long-term care and elderly care in Europe: are they good synonyms?

There is a general consensus, in Europe, in considering LTC public financing as a proxy of the resources committed to elderly care by each Government; the preciseness of this approximation depends on the extent to which LTC is representative of elderly care. We investigate this issue by estimating the resources spent on elderly LTC in Lombardy, an Italian region which, in terms of population, dimension, health care organization and economic development, could be compared to many European countries. Results highlight the absence of an appropriate method for assessing LTC elderly expenditure and suggest that the latter, as reported in international comparisons, is actually overestimated.