Paying for social care - good news or bad news?

Hospice care? Marie Curie nurses?

Sorry, daphne, but that's pretty nasty. Nobody is saying that cancer sufferers have an advantage.
My parents never had that much money to leave their four children; they died within three months of each other, one in hospital and one in a home. We had to clear out both their HA rented accommodation and the care home rooms less than a week after they had died. My dad's money passed to my mother and three months later her money was shared between us - about £500 each, I think it was. This was 11 years ago this month.
My mother in law had a house to sell. She is 95, suffering from dementia, and is paying £1000 a week for her care in a home. A month ago we were told she had a week to live, and was on end of life care. She is still alive, but I wouldn't call it living. The only advantage now is that she has stopped screaming at everyone. She just lies there, not knowing what is happening, or who anyone is. She has no idea that all her money is fast disappearing.
However it happens, it's pretty awful.

The thing is that the system up to now has been wrong for everyone but the rich, the people who can properly fund their care without worrying. They are usually the ones who have fleeced the system, too.

We need a properly regulated insurance based system that all pay into, but one run by the state, not private insurance. We also need to get back to care homes run by the councils, and properly financed.

I really don't think it fair to blame other people who are possibly just slightly better off than you are for your situation.
There are at least four people on GN who are in a similar situation. They are trying to think about what is best for everyone, not just for themselves.

Daphne I feel so sorry for the situation you are in but please do not look at it all as black and white. I for one and, having read the other posts, see that others too are not looking at this as being able to leave or be left £100,000. I just do not want a mess of a scheme that will not resolve anything. So please do not accuse everyone who does not agree that May is right of thinking such things. IT IS NOT TRUE.

As for your mother, she has medical needs not just care ones. If she needs morphine and oxygen as you say (and I don't doubt it) why are the doctors not dealing with this?. This is a medical issue not a care one. What is yours and your sisters relationship with her doctor? The care issue is more difficult but have you a hospice local to her? It could be worth contacting them to see if they can help. They may be able to give you advice or even practical help.

Whatever you can achieve your issue is not all care and you don't seem to have thought about whether Mays suggestion would actually work. When we have nothing to cling to - which is how I would feel in your place - we sometimes cling to anything that is offered, even if it is the wrong thing. We had the Dilnot committee and she has completely ignored their report - on ideological grounds.

Again, I am so sorry for what you are going through but I, personally, do not think this would solve the issue for anyone in your position. That is why I am against it - because I do not think it would work. I think our generation, and our parents if they are still with us, will have to pay from whatever capital they have including a house to pump-prime a scheme we haven't paid into before, but it will not work if they do not, at the same time, set up an insurance system to take us forward.

Durhamjen, your mother in law must be a very wealthy woman to pay £1000 per week for care. We went without for many years to buy our house, never having holidays and counting the pennies. If I developed dementia I could live for years with It, if the house was sold to pay for care it would be gone in a couple of years.
The only good thing us test the two children I have, learnt early on that you have to work hard to get on, they both have a strong work ethic and are good parents to their children, so will manage. I would rather not have to pay for this care so that my property could pass to my children. I would say all the sacrifices we made, we might as well not have bothered, except for the fact I believe in paying my own way and not having others pay for me. What I do object to are those that can work, not working, I know of one couple, one an ex teacher, who somehow are both on benefits, who constantly go on holidays and not cheap ones. If everyone didn't bother to save, have their own homes the system would collapse because no one would be paying in. For genuine cases no problem, if I have to pay for it when I become unable to manage, it will be a bitter pill to swallow, But the system is collapsing, those £1000 fees your mother in law us paying, if she didn't have so much money, the tax payer would be.

Very wealthy woman? That's a laugh.
Sold a bungalow in a pit village for £130,000. That sort of wealth. That was when she was 92.
That's all she had on top of her state pension.
She went without for many years, too.
She is paying that much because she went in to a home self funded for a couple of weeks respite. She is now in her fourth home.

.

Libby Purves wrote what I thought was a good article about this idea of May's for paying for social care. She described it as a socialist idea because richer (and luckier people cos house prices have gone nuts over the last half century) people, like those with financial assets like houses, would be paying more than poorer people. Made sense to me.

Link here.

What does make sense is that there is a social care national insurance. That way we are ALL cared for on an equal footing.

Interestingly a little more than 50% of people needing care are under 65.

The question remains as to those without assets - whether they will be to access care in the same way as those with assets.

It does ww. Using capital, especially difficult to retrieve capital, seems madness to me. Yes this generation of pensioners will have to do some of that while paying into an insurance simply because we did not set up a fund 25 years ago when other countries thought ahead and we did not. But to rely on generation after generation doing that seems incredibly short sighted and have a lack of the understanding of unintended consequences.

Every one should be able to access the same level of care - if only because it saves the system money in the long run. It would seem more fair if everyone with large assets paid in to the fund rather than making it specific to only those who end up requiring care when it becomes a bit of a double whammy. This could be done with a specific inheritance tax paid into the fund until it was large enough to support care with just the insurance contributions.

Fairness not money per se is what it should be about.

I don't think the fund requires inheritance tax, just a stream of tax (say 2%) on every income, from the year forward.

durhamjen

Your posts leave me thinking your mother-in-law is at present having to pay for her care as she has over £23.000.00 in her combined financial incomes.

Would your mother-in-law and those who find themselves in the 'system' as it stands not belong to the group who would be better off under the raising of the personal finance level to £100.000.00, if it were ever introduced at some stage?

As it stands if you are in ' residential care ' at the moment the cost is funded by your entire financial income, including property, until you have only £23.000.00 left.

If you are receiving ' care at home ' you will have to pay until your income reduces to £23.000.00 but your property is not counted as your financial means.

It could be asked is that fair to have an unlevel playing field?

Now it could be argued that ALL care should be free and nobody should have to pay but I think that ship has sailed years ago.

Nobody in their right mind would say they are happy not to be able to leave their hard earned income to their children if they require care but those who have no wealth/property will not be affected by either the current situation , they will receive free care come what may.

Or have I made a mistake in my thought as to what happens here and now to those who require 'residential care' to those who require 'home care'?.

I haven't a clue how it would be adopted but I would have thought it was quite a 'Socialist' reform, if it ever came to fruition, which it looks like it will not. If it turns out to be ' a cap ' John McDonnell on the Andrew Marr show said he thought the mention of £72.000.00 was about the right figure, if I remember correctly.

Perhaps politics could grow up and there could be a cross party agreement for once instead of more political footballing.

Depends of course what the cap means exactly - as was shown before by someone with more knowledge than me it in practise means far more.

I agree POGS a cross party agreement would be better, for the NHS as well, come to that, and take politicking out of it all.
It seemed like quite a left wing proposal by the Conservatives, and one that I agree with and think they should have a consultation etc but not throw this reform of social care out because there has been a 'scare' about it.

Pogs there is nothing remotely socialist IMO in a system of only those unfortunate enough to need it in having to pay for it whilst those who are lucky enough not to keep hold of all their assets ( and even more so as IHT thresholds increase).What is socialist is how NHS is funded - we all pay in and then take out as we need. As for funding social care in another way - I see why some of you suggest some sort of NI but I would argue that it should not just be levied on working people but on all income. I still think that looking at taxing in some way the huge increases in house prices that some people benefit from would be a fair idea. And/or bringing down the threshold for IHT with a more gradual increase in the % payable.

POGS I think at present it means if you have more than £23,000 in savings and that is the level at which you would not have to subsidise your care out of savings - obviously if your income is such that you can afford the cost of a nursing home it would make no difference.

The thing is that at the moment a property would have to be sold and the money used to pay for care until the £23,000 level is reached unless a spouse is still living in the property.

If someone is well looked after the money raised from the sale of an average property would be used up fairly rapidly at a cost of £1,000 per week.

Why has the cost of care increased so dramatically in such a short time? I can remember being horrified when a friend told me that her mother was having to pay £650 a week (in the London area) and it only seems to have been about 2 or 3 years ago.

Perhaps politics could grow up and there could be a cross party agreement for once instead of more political footballing.
We can only live in hope

I suspect that it's the usual law of supply and demand, Jalima - "more people need care so we can put prices up".

Re. Care home costs. All I do know is that in the last road I lived in there was a family that owned care homes. Two of the sons drove drove cars that were £120,000 each, and there was no finance on the cars.

I don't think the fund requires inheritance tax, just a stream of tax (say 2%) on every income, from the year forward.

I do not think we can draw on what the next generation is paying in Norah; the idea of the inheritance tax would be to make up for the fact that they will do it from the beginning of work throughout their lives whereas we will only pay it for the last half our lives. I am sorry but I do not think we are so wonderfully different that different rules should apply to us.

Now it could be argued that ALL care should be free and nobody should have to pay but I think that ship has sailed years ago.

Not free POGS - that would be as silly thing to think we could have - but free at the point of need just as the NHS is. We pay for the NHS though taxation, over a lifetime and whether we need it or not, as an insurance. This need not be any different.

GracesGranMK2, if inheritance tax begins, who is to say when it will ever end?

I have to agree with Rigby POGS on your view of a socialist policy. What the Theresa May Party suggested is far from socialist and probably far from conservatism too - it is just made up by May and punishes many for being ill - nothing more.

Whatifery Norah.

It appears you are not prepared to pay as much as the next generation will have to Norah, but feel you should be protected from doing so, even from the lower cost of an insurance scheme. I would have to assume from that that you assume you, personally, will not need care so do not want to insure against the cost (or know you can afford it if you did) and, because of this you do not want to help your neighbour by pooling the cost of the random threat of needing care.

Whilst I don't have a problem with a social care tax as long as everyone with an income over a certain amount (yet to be decided) pays in for their lifetime. However, is it fair that someone say, for example aged 25 with an income of maybe £20,000 who might never, get to own their own home should/might pay into such a scheme when someone on a slightly lower income but with property assets of perhaps millions would not and be able to hand it over lock stock and barrel to their children.

Forgive my hopeless grammar but I hope you get what I am trying to say. There has to be give and take.