Paying for social care - good news or bad news?

Also gb social insurance would mean that unlike private insurance they couldn't differentiate premiums based on risk so if, for example, you had two people earning the same, they'd pay the same % regardless of family history

MOnica's points are well made - it's going to be a nightmare - it won't work and it won't be fair and it will eventually be dropped in this proposed format.

It basically unfair. Get sick and pay - stay healthy and keep your money.

It is little different to privatisation of social care.

Next step NHS

Gilly I have suggested continuing the NI after pension age several times. I have no idea how much that would raise but even if you had to raise more on top it would show that this generation of pensioners were contributing to their care. Or you could have a specific Health and Care National Insurance for everyone. We would then be discussion what we were prepared to afford rather than what the government is going to allow us.

discussing not discussion.

Sorry GGMK2, I may be missing something here, but haven't pensioners in general paid NI all through their working lives specifically to fund care in old age? It's not their fault if successive governments combined with increased longevity means this hasn't been enough.

The young are getting a double whammy, huge debt and no inheritance.

angel no they haven't -I think NI is one of the most misunderstood taxes going. It only funds 20% of the ZnHS costs and most of the other benefits it was supposed to give you entitlement to have been drastically cut or removed. That's why it's a busted flush - it's also really unfair as its a tax on working people ( under pension age of course)

Or NHS even

What we have to bear in mind is currently the amount most social services are willing to pay for a care home place is well under the fee the home charges.When your savings run out your family may well have to decide between keeping their inheritance intact or using it for your continued care. Such is the joy of handing the wellbeing of folk over to private enterprise.

And of course the reason ss depts can only pay such low amounts is that their funding from central government has been drastically cut.

I've been travelling 120 miles a day for the last few weeks to visit my mother, who possibly only has a couple of weeks left. She has terminal cancer and a host of other issues. The hospital discharged her and, to date, she's not receiving any home care. I doubt if anything will be arranged before she dies.

She has very little money to leave, so I know there's no nice inheritance for me.

I guess I am angry that people can feel so entitled that they moan about their children being left with only £100,000 - or maybe they're expecting to inherit from their own parents.

angelab How many female pensioners have paid NICs all their working lives? Every time this topic comes up, there are always a number of posters who claim they weren't expected to work when they were younger or they only paidmarried woman's stamp.

In any case, they didn't pay for themselves. They paid for their parents' generation and the percentage was nowhere near what it is today.

dd I think everyone paid what was asked of them at the time - and if some chose to pay married women's stamp (not me) I agree that you would expect that down the line they would get less. However, that choice was offered by the govt of the day - that was my point.

Oh! Silly me I forgot that my offspring will be able to take a year off with no pay to care for me and save their inheritance!!!

Bet even the BBC is finding this difficult to spin.

Independent says that the manifesto will bind the Tory MPs to " no deal is better than a bad deal"

But dd what you don't seem to want to address are the basic principles which should underpin the funding of social care. Should people with plenty of money fund their own cancer treatment? Absolutely bloody not - should people with dementia fund their own social care - again absolutely bloody not. What is dreadful in your situation is that your mother is not getting the care she needs - I would be absolutely furious but railing about people who can afford to leave money to their children won't solve that problem. What we need is a properly funded social care system, not run for profit and paid for by everyone through some mechanism. But we won't get it because TM couldn't give the proverbial flying fig about it all - she'll never have to worry about having or paying for decent social care herself and neither will the rest of her wealthy cabinet.

Exactly rig

I have always agreed with you about paying NI after retirement based on income GGm2.

So sorry to hear about your mum daphnedill I know how hard it is but I was very fortunate that my mum and grandma lived very close by. I agree that £100,000 is a huge amount of money. I would love to be in a position to leave that amount of money to my family.

she'll never have to worry about having or paying for decent social care herself and neither will the rest of her wealthy cabinet

Yes you are right Rigby46 but show me any politician from labour or Tory that will?

They all live in a kind of cuckoo world.

We can't expect the young people to pick up the bill for all of OUR care costs though can we? We have to (if we can) help out. How selfish would it be older people to sit on their piles (ha ha I nearly took that out but decided to leave it) and watch the young ones work themselves to death without ever being able to retire?

gb the problem I have about paying NI both before and after pension age is that it is such an unfair tax on working people who get very few contribution based benefits from it these days ( apart from the pension). It's also a tax on employers as well. In an ideal world I just think we should rethink the whole tax system and the balance between the various types of taxes. BTW, as an employer do you know if employers have to pay NICs for workers over pension age?

But they won't gill insurance!! Which will insure their care as well.

We have a generation of children who are almost certainly never going to be able to afford their own house. How is their care going to be paid for? More so if they have no inheritance to look forward to.

This is a ridiculous idea.

On the one hand most parties are encouraging young people to get on the housing ladder and buy a property; and at the other end of the system they would have been much better off renting as their care in old age would be paid for. It is a very muddled message and fundamentally unjust.

Rent your property, spend all your earnings on wine women and song and the state will pick up the tab when you need care. Save money and buy your property and the value that you have achieved through hard work will be handed over to the state when you need care, when you have put in all that work in order to have something to leave to your children to make their lives easier.

Well that's why I would favour raising money for social care on an estate tax rather than income tax. I'd be quite content to pay a percentage of anything at my death into a social care fund of some kind. What would be fair would be that we all would pay something if we left anything above a certain amount. I don't know at the moment if I'll need social care and if I'm lucky enough not to, it seems really unfair that my dd will inherit far more than others whose parents have had to pay care costs. But I don't think the way to make it fair is just to take money from those who are unlucky enough to need social care. The really really big issue of course is the huge inequalityin society over and above issues around paying for social care. They are insurmountable are they not and all we silly lefties can do is just try and suggest things that might improve things at the margin - I wish I could do more