[Coherence in the care for the aged: an incoherent report]

The Social and Cultural Planning Office produced a study about the way in which to cope with the rapidly rising problem of aging. In their solution, the substitution between different forms of care for the elderly, they made a couple of major mistakes. The three most important are: they use average costs instead of costs concerned with the kind of patients they think can be helped in less costly forms of care; they do not take into account the so called double aging, which means that not only the group of people above 65 is growing, but also in that group the real old and therefore more needing are growing and thirdly their comparison includes only the costs of collective finance. We think that their method is valid, and that we have the know how and skill to make, together with all researchers in the health area, better and for decision makers more useful schemes to tackle this problem.