Policy options for a public long-term care system in Spain: a microsimulation model.

To date, both in Spain as well as in the other Southern European countries, the care for dependent elderly people has been implicitly considered as a problem of a private nature to be solved by the family. Nevertheless, following the passing of the new Dependency Act, the foundations have been laid for the creation in Spain of a public long-term care system with universal coverage. In that context, through the development of a microsimulation model, the main objective of the article is to assess alternative policy designs that consider higher levels of coverage than those in place prior to the Dependency Act.