To get annoyed when people try to avoid care costs

[paramedicswift]

People deserve good care in old care, potentially in their own home or in a care home.

While it is completely rational thing to do, people try avoid this cost by spending as much money as they can before they need this care or they give it away to family.

On one side, it is completely rational. I understand that people have paid taxes, national insurance and worked for their entire life. They have a desire to see this work to be passed onto their children for them to benefit from their hard work.

One the other side, it is incredibly entitled. To me, your care in old age is just another cost of life. It is like cost of food, cost of shelter. I wish I did not have to spend money on rent, food and travel to work. But I have to. This is just life.

It makes me even more angry when family inheritances come into it. It is just so greedy and horrible. I do not know why it is unacceptable to some people to apply for benefits and never work but completely acceptable to avoid paying for social care.

It is a bit of tragedy of commons because if everyone did it, then taxes would be wasted on caring for old people that COULD HAVE afforded the care themselves rather than important things such as education for children, public infrastructure projects and healthcare that benefit everyone.

To everyone according to their need. If someone cannot genuinely afford old age care and they did not deliberately avoid the costs, then I have no problems with state subsidised care.

Am I being unreasonable?

I agree with ilove - this myth that there are loads of really well off old people out there who have had easy lives might comfort generation rent but it's not true for many. For a start plenty had to leave their families during WWII to avoid being bombed, then they had rationing, then 1970s awful inflation and property crash, then even my father worked full time until 77 and died at 79 having used his life savings on his dementia care at home. Each generation has it's difficulties. The fact you might get a free trip on a non existent local bus because you're 65 is not a massive perk for many particularly when you can hardly walk to your front door never mind go on a jaunt to town.

The only thing pensioners are not means tested for is attendance allowance.

ScOffasDyke and MythicalKings,

I am talking about from the children's perspective. I fully accept that you have worked hard and studied hard.

You cannot deny that from your perspective, your children will always be more important and valuable than everyone else's children.

This is just natural.

The problem is, the children who grow up without a helping hand at the start of their life are then handicapped permanently against your children. They then have to get free care too!

Do you see how it is an endless cycle? This is called social reflexivity and in some ways a self-fulfilling prophecy.

By people witnessing other people 'get things for free' that they cannot genuinely afford, these people act in a way that benefits themselves, their children but takes away resources from everyone else.

At the end of the day, who do you think is paying for your care? Who is the muppet paying for your care so that you can give your money to your children?

Everyone else's children.

With regards to being lucky. You are incredibly lucky. You have had incredibly opportunities all your life, you have been educated, you have been brought up in a loving family free from abuse, you have not been a victim from political or religious violence. You are probably on a stable income and not on minimum wage. You do not have a zero hour contract. You might even own your own house and not have the risk of being thrown out in 2 months because the landlord wants to sell the house or increase the rent 20%. How much of all this is because of the system itself and how much was your hard work? I tend to believe most was due to the system you were born into.

It is easy to think that all the things you received in life were 100% from your own work but that is just not true.

Beaufort Belle, your first post about your DG was describing my mum. She's just turned 80 and doesn't really know who I am now but physically is very fit. It is very depressing knowing what is to come and I'm hoping she will have stroke/heart attack that will finish her off quickly (sorry if that sounds callous but it's what I would want for myself in this situation).
The government had a good opportunity to sort out funding care but because they have fudged it so much, the financial products they were hoping the fininacial markets would introduce have just not happened.

paramedicswift

I am already one of those children. As is my OH. Our parents weren't in the position to help with a deposit so we both agree we would like to do that for our children if possible

By people witnessing other people 'get things for free' that they cannot genuinely afford, these people act in a way that benefits themselves, their children but takes away resources from everyone else.

Apply this to health care and education as well, then.

You have had incredibly opportunities all your life, you have been educated, you have been brought up in a loving family free from abuse, you have not been a victim from political or religious violence.

You should never assume. I have been far from lucky in some ways. I have survived, overcome and dealt with abuse. Does that make me lucky as well?

Yes, we own 2 houses, as it happens and are accidental landlords. We rent one out at well below market rate to a single mum and her DCs because we believe in putting something back. The only way she will be ever be evicted is if the government come calling for our care home fees.

Everyone in a care home should be entitled free to a basic level of care, whatever their age or reason for being there. Just as everyone is entitled to basic health and social care.

MythicalKings - I am sorry. I absolutely did make an assumption and I am ignorant of your sufferings. This is not what I intended - not that my lack of intention makes it any better for you. I apologise for using this as an example which sadly does not apply to you. I should have prefixed the 'lucky' with 'If' with all those points. From my life experience and the others I know and being born in the UK these are true.

Also - that is very kind of you to do that. My landlord is decent too. He has not upped the rent for 3 years and we are good tenants and I am grateful.

I want free care for all too, providing we are not taking advantage of the system.

Signlake. Understandable. It is the combination of gifting your children assets in addition to avoiding your care costs that annoys me the most and my main gripe. I hope your children are grateful to you!

It's OK, para, raw nerve and all that. You were right about a loving family which is what got me through.

We are perfectly comfortable and don't need the income from the house so it was the natural thing to do when we heard about our tenant's difficulties. We'd just finished "doing it up" and were pondering what to do - sell or rent and then kismet intervened.

I am sorry about your mum fluffcake. The best possible clinical care should be available to her because she is suffering from an unavoidable disease that has no correlation with life choices.

I too hope she doesn't get to the end of this vile disease and it isn't unnatural to do so.

paramedic my DH was hungry as a child, he came from mining stock. My mother was a narc although I don't deny I had everything money could buy. Everything we have done together has been to give our children the start and lives we didn't have. From DH's perspective it is so they have, within reason, what they want and can bring home the school trip letter with a gleaming face. It means so much to him to send that back signed and to enjoy the build up to the trip. From mine, it is that they can always come home and be loved and welcomed and accepted for who they are - for their imperfections as well as their, in my eyes, wondrousness.

Perhaps you should reflect a little about other people's lives and what they have coped with to get there before you proclaim that all others have strived for should be taken away.

YANBU

BeaufortBelle, that is rather heart warming.

I did not mean to be insensitive to anyone who has had to cope with a hard life. Nor do I take stripping people of their possessions lightly. I would like society (and the system) to be more universally fair and equitable. Nobody should go hungry or without shelter. Everyone would get the same start in life.

I know you do not like what I have said about inheritance tax. It is difficult isn't it? How do you make it fairer for everybody without taking things away or giving things away? I think the promise from inheritance tax is that you do not need stuff when you have passed and then every generation 'resets' to the same state. So no generation has it harder or easier than the last.

Imagine a world where wealth was perfectly redistributed back into the system: Education is super funded. Every child is educated and given 1:1 help. Class sizes are 5-10 pupils. There are high speed bullet trains between London, Sheffield and Scotland. Elderly care is amazing. And so on. Obviously wishful thinking. Imagine a world where there was no need to pass things down because the system was excellent and your children had nothing to gain from it.

Para, it would be simpler and more effective to up income tax for very high earners and make sure there are no loopholes for companies to avoid tax.

People will always find ways to make sure their children inherit. That's what the aristocracy have done for generations.

I'd take huge slices away from defence, the wastage there is an abomination.

But if people earn a lot of money they pay a lot of tax anyway. Can you get your head around six figure tax bills and the level of work, teamwork to support it and sometimes sacrifice for the family that the sort of hours earning that sort of money involves. The 12 -14 hour days week in week out, the driven partner, dealing with parents' evenings alone, sorted the little stuff and the big stuff and the expectation that the house is perfect and everything is always organised, the calls that come through on holiday, the flights back to London from the family holiday leaving a mother with two small children alone being awfully jolly to keep all the balls in the air. It is privileged yes. It doesn't mean it isn't hard in different ways. Dealing with the wankers at various dinners, and that includes some of the ghastly wives, nodding and smiling and being agreeable at all times. Thank God for Mnet eh!

I don't really see a problem with a hypothecated death tax that attempts to match the cost of social care funding and is used only for that purpose. It could go up (or even down) annually depending on projected spend!

The other thing I would do (as I've said before (tin hat on - last time I said this a poster offered me a lethal injection for myself and my friends - nice) is means test the social element of continuing care.

My mum has continuing care in a private nursing home and the whole of her care is paid for by the taxpayer even though she has a house worth £250k she will never see again and an £18k pension.

This is all very well - cradle to grave etc - but at the same time, to give just a few examples from my personal experience:-

• there is no paediatric NHS dentistry where I live unless you agree that the parents will pay privately
• earlier this year I paid £600 for a private paediatric endodontist because the NHS waiting list for a 15 year old was 10 months just for a consultation
• the waiting list for a young person (or indeed any person) for talking therapy on the NHS is 12 weeks

I could go on ....

Seriously, how can anyone with a house and other assets moan about paying for their social care while still keeping a straight face?

People go into care homes at the point of their lives when they don't actually need their savings.
It's usually those who hope to benefit from the estate that whinge about the costs.

I agree with you but your mother is very lucky to have the level of care she has. my grandmother had that level of care. The biggest tragedy was that she got it because her family were articulate and able to look at the legislation. Her family would have been happy to contribute towards it but the way the system was organised more than 20 years ago meant they couldn't. Just as for the two years my dd went to a state secondary school we would have been happy to pay a bit so all the children could benefit but we couldn't.

My grandmother needed that level of clinical care. I think some of the problem is that many elderly people could be cared for at home with some input from family but often family isn't prepared to provide that. The alternative is a care home for social rather than clinical reasons and there the lines have been blurred. A lot of people need optional social care and this should be self funded. A lot of people need essential clinical care and this should not be self funded - perhaps some of the comforts that go alongside it should be self funded but not the clinical care or a basic provision of residential care.

They are very difficult issues. As a free market capitalist I don't actually have any problems with inequalities and money isn't a huge determinant of happiness anyway so it does not matter if someone has more money than someone else.

You could argue that those who have paid a lot of tax and bought a house and want to leave 60% of their money to their children (the other 40% already goes to the state) are may be more deserving of free care in old age than idle layabouts who have never done a day's work in their lives and lived off the state from cradle to grave. There are plenty of ways to argue the issue of who pays for what but the bottom line is that we are going to have huge costs as a nation for a growing elderly population.

One solution I favour which Germany has (and in fact most cultures naturally have anyway) is move responsibility for older family members to the family from the state. That is obviously a much cheaper option for tax payers. Even Scottish law has an obligation on parents to support adult children so it is not exactly a novel idea.

As for what a parent can hand to a child and if caring for loving and feeding your child well is unfair to others I just don't agree. We pass our DNA to our children for a start and all the other things that matter and I don't see why money is anything worse than say having read them bed time stories or breastfed them - they all advantage them over others.

"Everyone in a care home should be entitled free to a basic level of care, whatever their age or reason for being there. Just as everyone is entitled to basic health and social care."

Nice thought but completely unrealistic and unaffordable. Central government have just slashed £1m from the social care budget. Also, everyone is not 'entitled to basic social care', it is mostly means tested with the exception of very basic equipment and short term enablement/reablement.

Your ideal world where there is no benefit to children getting an inheritance because all their needs are provided or are easily achievable sounds lovely, but that just isn't the world we live in.

Some children will benefit from their parents money and be advantaged compared to others, but they will also be disadvantaged compared to others, because there will always be someone with more. It just depends on who you're making the comparisons with.

It is also very misleading to assume that those of us who have had some financial advantage because of parents are lucky. It assumes that the only type of advantage one can have is about finances, as if that's all it takes for a child to grow up to be successful, and that's just not the case. There are so many other types of hardship, which I recognise that you have now acknowledged, but it's an attitude that really grates on me when I see it displayed by MN posters, which I do regularly! As the saying goes, the best things in life are free, and having a little inheritance to get you started on the housing ladder doesn't automatically mean your life is going to be easier than someone who hasn't had that.

There are some very Randian posters on mumsnet! I hope they never have to rely, like she eventually did, on decent public services.

People who post here generally seem to have no understanding of what a "free market" actually is.

Phone hacking is a probably the best recent example of a genuinely "free" market.

So was, say, the Consulting Association market in the national insurance numbers of blacklisted trade unionists.

What you actually mean when you talk about a free market, is a market in which the government intervenes to regulate, but only in the ways that you approve of, and that further your own interests.

There would be eg no need for good legal services in a genuinely free market. Instead what you would need is power, insider knowledge, good social connections and no morals.

Sadly, your mythological "free market" wouldn't last long before it imploded.

but in germany close family is billed for the care, down to benefits level. and you can't get out of paying, even if you are estranged.
so you might have a family with children, parents in good jobs but on the breadline because all 'disposable' income goes to the care home.

And as i posted above workers rights are being eroded. Someone in a low paid job cant keep taking time off to help out a family member. You cant have it both ways.

And then theres the sexist element. Because it will be women who are expected to do this and risk their jobs even though they are lower paid.

From other posts I don't think lotus has a clue about dementia tbh. I spent last weekend in hospital with my mum who was vomiting bile due to a related condition. Every time she was given a fresh cardboard hospital sick bowl, she mistook it for something like a children's' party hat, fishing around inside it with her fingers for the string that goes under your chin and turning it over and over wondering what it was for.

82 years old, she worked as a teacher for many years.

Words cannot describe how this disease destroys you.

My father had it. It's a terrible terrible thing. He spent £130k in his last year on full time care at home. I do know quite a bit about it. My statement that the nation cannot afford the care bills coming up so we should move to a German system with family being responsible is simply one of the few practical suggestions about there. I am not suggesting abandoning all state provision but a general move to your children have financial reponsibility for you is not a bad idea and also accords with most people's underlying moral code in any event.

It also solves the problem posed by the thread of rich middle class people giving money to children well before they get sick and at least 7 years before they die to avoid inheritance tax and then falling back on the state when they are much older. So surely the socialists amongst us would love my solution?