Short of staff, Norway eyes robot care for elderly

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Norway/USA medical care solutions

Hi,
Well first of all the scientific group is located in Norway, and working for a goal based on Norwgian taxes and health-care.

I'm not sure how the system works in the U.S. at present time, but if I'm not all wrong you have to pay an insurance to apply for health-care!?

In Norway, everybody has to pay for health-care, and a quite large amount of our salary automaticly goes to the Norwgian government (at precent time I pay about 40% of my salary to the government!). This is not optional, and hence everybody have to pay. In addition to this, on almost everything that is sold in Norway, an additional tax of 25% is added to the sales price (this is not optional). Basically if I buy something from the U.S. I have to pay 25% of the sales price to the government.

In addition to these taxes, every employee gets an additional (non optional) amount of money from the firm he/she is working for, which goes directly to a savings account. This account is locked until he/she reaches the age of 62 or 67 (when workers normally retires), and at this point all the savings in this account covers all the basic needs until "the end".

So the idea of this kind of solution is that our government will pay for these robots, instead of paying ordinary people (like they do today), since we will have a short for younger people/ordinary workers in the future.

I do understand your situation, and this would be totally unfair if your health-care is based on my initial statement. However, for the Norwegian people, the question is not if one can afford it or not, the question is rather would we like it or not??

This would of course be another thread of this discussion, since another big problem (the government does not mention this...... why?), is that the elderly simply feels forgotten and alone. The Norwegian people generally works a lot, and many of the elderly is actually alone a great amount of time.... And their only social aspect is when the nurse visits them.... (where's the grown-up kids??). So would a robot replace this social need??

Sorry if my English is poor,

Best regards from Norway!

Posted by: kare.tragethon@...   Posted on: 02/10/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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