Tory minister calls for introduction of social care insurance

Most seem to think a social care tax would be a good idea, to raise a significant amount it would have to be levied on every employee and put into a separate pot, are there enough working people to pay for an increasing retired population.

Slightly off topic, but I gather that in France, children of parents needing care are expected to help to fund it.

A French colleague of a dd, working in the U.K., is apparently legally required to pay €250 a month towards the care of her father, which she finds a great strain on top of mortgage, childcare and other bills. She particularly resents having to pay it since she describes her father as a wastrel and spendthrift who was never a good father anyway.

I can't imagine any govt. here daring to introduce a legal requirement for such a thing.

I do agree that there should be many more places for the elderly who don't actually need hospital care, but for whatever reason can't yet go home. An awful lot is said and written about very costly bed-blocking in such cases, but as so often, nothing is apparently done.

Those who have had dealings with the present system (like Granny23 and Luckygirl) know only too well the immense strain it puts on relatives, at just about the worst time, too.

There just aren't enough hospital beds, nurses, care homes or home carers. What we do have is cut to the bone and rationed. Even the 'best' care is far from ideal.

My friend is helping to care for her mother, along with other family members and carers, despite being in her late sixties - and having had a heart attack herself. I see her getting paler and thinner, more worried and depressed, by the day.

What will happen to our kids? Their children will still be working and elderly themselves!

A tax/NI scheme (ring fenced for care) would have to be mandatory, just like pensions. Some of us won't need it but we'd all pay in and have peace of mind. It would be lovely to know, for sure, that we could give children an inheritance!

CoolioC - ah but you DO have to sell your property to fund an OH's care in some circumstances. You need to do that to pay the top-up. If you do not pay this third party top-up your OH will finish up in sub-standard care - where I live the maximum SSD will fork out for nursing care is £573 per week (from which they deduct his pension). Where oh where can you possibly find decent care for that money in today's market?

If you choose for your loved-one to have decent care the you have to pay a top-up; and if like me you cannot sustain that for long because you have insufficient savings then there is no choice but to sell and downsize.

I agree about the cross-party think tank - but there have already been several similar exercises in this field and they have come up with plans that no government has been brave enough to implement.

When it comes to the social care crisis IMO every possible idea and solution needs to be put on the table! Its just a starting point and IMO its wrong to criticise anyone for brain storming as it will take radical thinking to solve

I think it's a good idea and should have been implemented years ago but my concern is that care homes will bump up their charges just as vet bills went through the roof when it became the norm to insure your pets.

True merlotgran. Like with free childcare policies that leave nurseries short changed so they have to find ways to add top ups to fees

A personal social care insurance policy wouldnt work for people who need social care as young adults who never had the chance to pay in!

You are right Luckygirl successive Governments have opted out of the total overhaul needed by our Social Care system. It's a huge under taking.

Personal care insurance will not work because the premiums necessary to cover the cost would be too high. In 2017/8 LAs spent over £21 billion on social care and it is calculated that individuals spent another £11bn on top of that - a total cost of £32billion. The average weekly rate for residents in care homes is around £625. Obviously this varies considerably over the country.

The average length of stay in a residential home is about two years. At the average price rate that will cost around £65,000. Premiums for that much cover or more will be expensive and many people will not be able to afford it.

And so it begins...
(and yes, I do understand the differences which others have already outlined, but as many warned before the election, the privatisation of our NHS would not happen in one fell swoop, but insidiously, bit by bit).

That's what I was thinking too, MOnica. I'm no expert on insurance or risk assessment, so I don't know how much it would cost to insure that amount of money. It might be doable for people starting in their 20s, but at that stage of their lives few people think about what might happen in 60 or 70 years. They've already been hit by increased NICs and pension contributions, while knowing that their own future pensions will be less generous than they are now. If a new system were to be voluntary, I can see many not opting into it, so what would happen in the future? Would they seriously just be left to die at home without any support?

It's by no means perfect, but at least the tax and NICs system means that there is some correlation between a person's ability to pay and what they actually pay.

One way or the other, somebody needs to pay for social care. It seems the big choice is whether the state pays for it through taxation/NICs, which means contributions are related to income, or whether people pay a fixed rate, which means that it will be prohibitively expensive for lower earning people.

It boils down to whether it's an individual responsibility or a collective responsibility.

The devil will be in the detail and I agree with the poster who wrote that everything should be on the table.

My Mother ended up in a Nursing Home. My Father was still in the family home.

There had been a Top Up but eventually she ended up getting all her fees paid

caretobedifferent.co.uk/category/nhs-continuing-healthcare/

This was quite an arduous task but eventually my Mother, who had dementia and was doubly incontinent got CHC and all fees were paid .

It already happens in Europe, my sister has always ha to pay towards any likely care home costs.

I think that it will be affordable for future generations. I don't know the statistics, but let's assume that half of us die at home or in hospital and the other half need long term care (so called). That's about a 30K contribution in a working lifetime each, quite possible as a 'care tax' I'd say.

www.ft.com/content/dea4fc1c-611b-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2

I agree with your post Granny23. Unless you are in this situation, and indeed know only too well how the current system works it is patronising to offer simplistic advice.

I am so sorry that it has come to this Luckygirl as I have followed your situation for some time.

I have an elderly, disabled mother with dementia and have applied for so called Continuing Health Care and I know very well, that it is a flawed system.

It is massively underfunded, and therefore raises the hopes of those, who are legally entitled to financial help, only for care to be refused. It is also very costly to have a legal representative and to appeal.

It is quite honestly a lottery whether you spend most of your savings on care in later years, or are "lucky" and drop dead with no expense to relatives (funeral apart) and leave a good inheritance. How fair is that?

I am definitely opposed to a system of private insurance. I think that since elderly social care was placed in the hands of private companies, now running Care Homes and Care Services, the service has deteriorated considerably. I do not believe you can make health or social care profitable unless you restrict it or charge excessive amounts to the consumer. Likewise with insurance companies.

What's wrong with increasing tax, not reducing it as has been proposed by the newly elected PM.

I agree with you that it should be paid out of taxation, in which case the wealthiest will pay more. I think the problem with increasing tax is that it's not ring-fenced, so future governments can spend it as they wish. I'm being devil's advocate.

One way or an other it does have to be paid for. The options are for it to be paid by individuals (in which case the wealthiest will get the best care) or whether it becomes a collective responsibility, as the NHS is.

Hetty That FT article is behind a paywall.

£30k for many people is still a lot. Many people would try to opt out and the wealthiest could afford to fund themselves anyway. That's what happened with "Obamacare" in the US.

It has to start somewhere and perhaps a social care insurance is the long term funding solution bit it doesn't address the here and now.

I see the scaremongering continues about selling off NHS, but the reality is that residential care homes are already in the private sector and have been for years. There needs to be a state business model to address it and insurance seems a good option. After all adverts abound for funeral costs and life insurance so why not social care insurance. Simples

Tooting29, not all residential care homes are in the private sector. My mother was lucky enough to spend her final years in an excellent council-run home close to us.
And it's not scaremongering - this is exactly how it will happen, piece by piece, with some people willing to accept it, until it's too far gone to retrieve

Not that simples! What about people already in their 60s, whose main working lives are over? Many of them have property, which could be sold or down-sized, but many other don't. They live frugally on a small pension and have few savings. Dividing £30k by the number of years they have left (on average) would still be unaffordable for many.

growstuff, I don't believe that it should be an insurance (with all the related overheads) but rather a tax, exclusively ring fenced for care:

I'm talking about starting a new system for future generations. I've already accepted that we are in real trouble, should we need care!