Support for the autonomy of the elderly: on what principles should a new financing model be based?

Summary This article provides an overview of the organization of the financing of assistance to dependent elderly people in France. It restores the principles that have governed, since 1996, the construction of national public solidarity for the financing of independent living assistance, based on the historical foundation of social assistance, and analyzes, beyond theoretical principles, the actual global consequences of their implementation through a tangle of more or less coherent systems. Finally, it puts forward some recommendations for improving the economic efficiency and equity of public action in the field of autonomy support. At a time when the Covid-19 epidemic has just focused the media spotlight on collective accommodation facilities for dependent elderly people (EHPAD), we feel it is particularly important to guide, without sentimentality or haste, the reflection on the investments that the community is ready to make for the care and safety of dependent elderly people.