Potentially, another national insurance tax increase to pay for social care

Why not just have a small death tax? This takes absolutely nothing from the money you have to spread thinly to make ends meet while alive. I really don't understand the problem so many people seem to have with this. It seems bonkers to me that so many people would rather live on less money and have poorer public services for themselves and their children while alive than pay some tax after they're dead.

Wrong. This is what happens when the cost of housing is out of reach and employers pay as little as they can get away with.

What is needed is for the government and life/pension/insurance firms to come up with some form of "lifetime" insurance policy. Yes, it will be costly, but my idea would be for it to cover life insurance if you die young, pension if you make it to pension age and care fees if you end up needing to be in a care home. Different "risks" and "needs" at different points in your life.

They can't even get the young to join the workplace pension schemes. Very high rates of people "opting out". This is what happens when you have decades of "cradle to grave" care paid for by the state - people just assume/expect that someone else will always bail them out and won't make provision for themselves.

The difference is that the NHS treats people with fractures and strokes and recovery is possible. There’s no treatment for dementia which is now the highest cause of death in the UK and involves years of 24/7 care.

Yes. Even older people without eg a family history of dementia are at risk for strokes, fractures and other such happy events.

Fully agree with this.

It would depend on whether you had any existing conditions, any family history of dementia, life expectancy taking into account the age at which your parents died. It could cost very little for people perceived as low risk. It would be untenable for me because I’m highly likely to develop dementia, it’s in my family. There’s none in my bloke’s family.

Blossom - to cover you for social care costs is really not the same as travel insurance. A monthly cost at a care home is at least £1.5k a week.

If you buy at at say 65 years old it would cost thousands and thousands.

It’s the way everyone buys travel insurance. You don’t just buy it every year on the off chance you might go on holiday.

You cannot buy an insurance policy just at the time you might well need to call upon it! It would be ridiculously expensive! No one would buy it.

You pay a seperate amount right from the day you start working. These funds are kept separately and of course some will die before they ‘use’ it. Thing is that most people want what they want now, be that be nights out, latest gadget, take ways, going to the pub, going on holiday etc. They don’t want to think about old age. That is for others to think about and fund.

Not a chance in hell will it happen. Labour are completely clueless - who thinks that prioritising growth and then hitting the business sector with tax after tax is going to achieve that needs to go for some economic training URGENTLY

In their 90’s and had to release equity to care for themselves? The horror! They had their whole lives ahead of them!

And what’s wrong with that? I self funded my cataract surgery and it’s our intention to do the same for any future surgery we need. Are you suggesting we shouldn’t spend our money as we choose? Equally I see no reason why people with assets shouldn’t fund their own care, why should the taxpayer foot the bill for people with assets who aren’t happy with the state offer?

Buying insurance upon retirement is obviously just impossible. When you consider many people don’t have pensions of £5,000 a month so how can they insure for care home fees which are exactly the same or more when they are in receipt of a pension? People would need to, in effect, make large contributions to “life cover” for decades. This is probably what’s needed but people will shriek “death tax”. So we get no further forward.

That you again Elon?

👋

“New figures show that since the pandemic there has been a triple digit percentage point rise in patients paying out of their own pockets for hip and knee operations.”
“Self-funded hip replacements increased 165 per cent, when comparing July to September 2019 figures against the same period in 2021, while self-funded knee replacements saw a 122 per cent rise. The third largest increase was cataract operations at 64 per cent.”

Of the 3 relatives I mentioned 1 had a hip replacement & the other was a knee replacement.

No one wants to do care work. It is undervalued, and underpaid.
Change that, and it would probably have a positive knock on affect.

Of course but you can’t change that without ££££

No one wants to do care work. It is undervalued, and underpaid.
Change that, and it would probably have a positive knock on affect.

You seem to forget what a large proportion of the population is old, even more than in 2017.

Er, I already mentioned the issue is an ageing population. We don’t have the workforce to provide the care that is needed, there is a 100k care vacancies and it’s predicted the increased demand over the next decade will mean 3 or 4 times that will be needed.

How can it happen by stealth? You can’t change something as fundamental as social care funding by stealth.

I did mean health & social care in general. So 3 older relatives have gone private for operations in the last few years as the waits were too long. They didn’t want to wait as their condition would deteriorate, I expect that to become more common in general as waits gets even longer, don’t you? Some relatives of my in-laws released some equity to fund private carers in the home. The state offer was rubbish but they were in their 90s & wanted to stay in their home. Think they spent about 80k. My colleagues mother has downsized and moved in with her to a new property with an annex and plans to fund care later.

How can it happen by stealth? You can’t change something as fundamental as social care funding by stealth. You seem to forget what a large proportion of the population is old, even more than in 2017.

There are more jobseekers than there are job vacancies. And that is just people on jobseeking benefits. Students, people looking to change jobs, SAHP, retired looking to earn pin money etc, are not included in those figures. And those vacancies includes zero hour rubbish that would never take someone off of benefits anyway.

Unlikely given it cost May the 2017 election.

2017 was a long time ago and the shit is now hitting the fan. And as I said lots will happen by stealth anyway.

Oh dear, that is crap 😥
Neither he or his mum can afford a place alone, and he is her full time carer.