(1) shift a major responsibility for care giving from the family to the state;(2)integrate medical care and social services via unified financing; (3) enhance consumer choice and competition by allowing free choice of providers,including even for-profit companies; (4) require older persons themselves to share the costs via insurance premiums as well as copayments; and (5) expand local government autonomy and management capacity in social policy. The government plans to expand the new program gradually over ten years, leading to a major expansion of community-based care,a fundamental reformoff in an cingandregulation of institutional care, and, more generally, a flexible approach to social policy based on individual entitlement and choice.