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?

The problem with the "spend money as s/he pleases" argument is that we seem to hold poor people to a higher standard than rich people when it comes to personal responsibility and not taking money from the state...

This is a massive problem now and obviously there is no easy answer.
But at present anyone who has saved pays for their care and anyone who has not does not (and often has superior care) - so once again the frugal are punished and those who can't or don't give a shit are rewarded.
We were skint growing up but df tried to pay his pension contributions. When he retired he was told he'd missed a couple of years and would lose 10% or so. Fair enough.
He asked what if he hadn't contributed at all- was told in that case he'd get the full pension.
Things like that make people angry.

I have no objection to people spending their own money as they please whilst they are able to do so.

I do object to people "hiding" money, transferring assets, etc to protect that money to pay for someone else's inheritance. I can't understand why posters think that's right. Why should I pay (through my taxes) for someone else to become rich? If children and grandchildren want to keep cash in the inheritance pot then they should do the care themselves.

To me, this all just shows such huge disrespect to the care profession. Care should be valued. Carers and care workers should be valued. Instead it's looked on something to be procured as cheaply as possible.

And it is largely a myth that this generation worked hard for everything they got. They are more likely to have benefited from decent pension provision and the property boom (as well as council house sales).

Perhaps old people with plenty of money should also have to pay for nhs treatment? I find it hard to separate the two. Surely if someones health warrants care it warrants it?

At one point there was talk of insurance policies did this happen?

For everyone saying the system needs reviewing.. This has already happened! It was called the Dilnott review and the outcomes of this came into law with the Care Act 2014 this April. The outcomes are being implemented this year and next year and will allow people to have a cap on how much they pay towards their care in their lifetimes.

I really don't think people understand the demographic shift we are seeing at the moment. Its overwhelming. To a certain extent your OP is a mute point. The state wont be able to pay for care for everyone. I envisage care insurance schemes being set up relatively soon. It may even become mandatory.

Yes a quick google tells me it will be capped at 72k. So it helps the well but not those who have assets of less than 100k.

What annoys me about care fee dodgers is the way they think they shouldn't have to pay for board and lodging - you know, normal costs every adult has to pay. Everyone should have to pay their rent, utilities and food bills in a care home and then the care element should be means tested.

I don't want my parents or my grandparents money when they die. They earned it and saved for a rainy day. If that rainy day leads to them needing to go into a care home, meh, they've earned the privilege of being able to choose which home they go into.

I can see me falling out with my siblings about it, they're money grabbers.

make me wonder why I'm bothering to try and get on the property ladder confused why on earth should I if there's a good likelihood that after all that saving, and paying out and going without holidays and nice things that it'll all be taken off us anyway?

I'm doing it so I can enjoy living here now and have somewhere secure to bring up my children. If the house doesn't need to be sold to find my care and future accommodation, then great. But I don't think that other people should have to pay more tax to protect the inheritances of (generally) well off people.

*have no objection to people spending their own money as they please whilst they are able to do so.

I do object to people "hiding" money, transferring assets, etc to protect that money to pay for someone else's inheritance*

Exactly this!

It's also worth nothing that the cost of care will be capped, but I don't think that includes the cost for accommodation. Which seems right to me.

YABU.

Yet another thread having a go at the elderly.

To correct one misapprehension you have. Those who are council funded do not get lower quality care homes. My (self funded) father had exactly the same care as those funded by the council in his nursing home. He had to listen while one man bragged about not working after the age of fifty and blowing all his savings on holidays and cars which he gave to his children. He sold his house to fund his lifestyle and there was no money left when he needed care.

There are a lot of younger people not working - why not have a pop at them for taking money from the state when they could be working? But, no, you say it's "quite right too" that they get "handouts".

So it's OK to take money from the elderly but not ok insist the younger generation work?

It should be both or neither.

The largest proportion of the welfare bill is spent on the elderly.

Not a judgment or criticism just a fact I'm throwing out there.

If anyone ever questions how the NHS can be privatised, take a good hard look at dementia care, it's already been done there in our lifetime, and the OP and many others on here just accept it, "care has to be paid for", just a given.

Well, when my grandad had dementia in the 90's, it wasn't a given. He didn't go in a care home, those were for rich people. He went on the dementia ward in the local NHS hospital. He was there for 5 years, that was normal. In the 90's, dementia was an NHS issue, not a social services one.

The wards were big and old, no private rooms, just curtains round beds, and by the time he died (1997), the wards were being closed, new patients and those well enough to be moved were going into care homes, the type only the sort of people who avoided the NHS used to use. Those first people were fully funded, and everyone thought this situation was better.

Fast forward a few years, and suddenly this all changed, suddenly care fees would be means tested, and you might have to sell your house.

Now we have the situation were some people will dodge it, and some people will pay, and some have nothing so will get it "for free", but everyone seems to think using private care homes is the way dementia should be dealt with and it's not an NHS issue. Many of those dumping assets now amongst the baby boomers will have had family members who had dementia being treated under the "it's anNHS issue so free hospital" system or the early days of care home provision being free. This is not something these people will have spent a large amount of their life thinking it would have to be paid for.

Try applying that to another big cost to the NHS, childbirth. Imagine they started closing NHS delivery units but you got to go to posh private hospitals and units funded via the NHS for a decade or so, then the costs were talked about in the press and then only certain aspects were funded and paying something became the norm. How long before means testing and "why should you get your baby for free?" Comes in.

I know it's not going to be very sustainable if a large percentage of baby boomers need care to being it back under the NHS, I do think, however the people trying to avoid paying for it aren't completely in the wrong. There has been many occasions when we've used the NHS when we did have savings enough to pay privately, (including 2 births that both ended up in theatre, privately we'd have been looking at a £10k bill each time we could have paid) but that's not considered to be socially unacceptable to use your local hospital and avoid paying.

I can definitely see where you're coming from OP. My role in a hospital s to help people to access services and I often get people saying that they can't afford prescriptions or need to get a taxi to the hospital which can cost up to £60 each way. However, when I dig a little deeper, it isn't that they can't afford it. It's that they don't want to pay. Many of them have savings well over the threshold to get help so there is nothing that I can do to help them and a lot of them get annoyed.

I can see it from both sides. Eg, it's frustrating that people who have never paid it get it for free. However, there are also plenty of people who have paid in who are also getting it for free because either their savings have run out or because they were in low paid jobs so couldn't save much for the future. People who can afford to pay should pay otherwise how will things ever be funded?

But dementia isn't a medical issue until it becomes end stage and quite rightly people with it shouldn't be institutionalised by being chucked onto a hospital ward.

I'm dreading the baby boomers getting to old age. The pampered generation. They'll make sure there is nothing left in the social care pot for my generation which will remove all choice from the equation for us.

YAB VVVVVU So a 78 year old has to provide full time care for her husband. Just because she has money ( not talking shit loads here as well ) . She daren't spend it on maintianing the house just incase it is needed for a care home when he gets too bad / ill and she really can't cope. She has a very low quality of life as her entire live / schedule is programed around his needs and any extra help she has to pay for.
SO lets leave it at that then and ignore that fact that yes they are entitled to help just as those who can work - choose not to so they can get the CB or other benefits that they are 'entitled to'.
Oh and forget the fact that their sibilings who are trying to pay for mortgages etc are also having to dig in to help as well when needed , by giving up their holidays to give their mum a break .( As the system will not provide respite care for her sick husband ) unless you pay for it.
WTF do you expect them to do ???? Oh yes sell the house - yes lets do that so all that they worked for and loved is sold and they can pay for care and mum can live in a tiny flat with no garden which is her only kind of break.
Inheritance my arse all we will be left with is debts.

One of the ladies we visit has severe dementia, a full time PA 24/7 AND two carers visiting for a total of 3 hours per day (half an hour morning and night, two fifteen minute visits during the day.)

When you add up that, the hospital bed, incontinence pads, GP visits and medication, it is frightening how the costs must add up. I don't know how her daughter managed to get such a generous packet because the house is a council house, not owned, and her daughter doesn't work - full time carer.

Anyway, I'm unlikely to need care. But I'll start transferring savings and assets into my children's names in my mid sixties anyway.

Frankly it wouldn't be such a bitter pill to swallow if care workers were paid decent wages out of the extortionate fees people paid. Instead we have massive rotations of staff on a very low wage being expected to undertake very personal and sensitive tasks for the vulnerable. Thus we end up with some care workers who dont give a shit.

If fees are so expensive then care workers should be appropriately trained, qualified and paid for the work they do.

The welfare state in a civilised society pays for essential services for those who can't pay themselves, regardless of whether they worked xx years or none.

Needing care in later life is comparable to needing benefits during working age. It often arouses the same envy / anger about "no point in working if they get the same as me and I work hard ..."

Not true. My late mum's assets were all used to help in the last 10 years of her life. First, we chose homecare staff with visiting times to suit her preferences.
Later, I chose an excellent 24-hr care home with lovely facilities & staff. It was just within a price range so that the council would fund it if the money ran out later, but we avoided some dreadful homes that they might have otherwise put her in if they'd funded from the beginning.

Whatever your income, you don't get (most) benefits if you have large savings; you won't get free care if you own a large capital asset like a house.

Because we can only afford to subsidise those who can't pay, not the entire population. Simple maths.
The UK is behind other countries in planning for the new demographic, e.g. Germany set up mandatory longterm care insurance in 1995, deducted like income tax from everyone. That's the fairest system, imo.

Also, it depends on whether you believe in inheritance tax, or whether you think it should cut off at a level well above what affects your own family.

Why should those whose parents rented have to subsidise windfalls for the others ?

IHT is the least painful tax: the alternatives are raising income tax or cutting public expenditure.

What is much less fair is people who are lazy arses and been on benefits all their lives when they could have worked get help yet people who did the right thing and worked and saved have to use their own money and get no support.

Ah, the benefit-bashers are in full swing.

The last few years of life can be absolutely miserable, regardless of the best care. I'm another who would go to Dignitas or whatever if I get dementia.

In my view care costs should be covered by the taxpayer - we don't say rich people should fund their own healthcare or send their kids to private schools (well some so, but I don't, if you pay into the system you have a right to benefit from it as well). However, it would also be sensible for there to be an insurance scheme set up with diffferent claim levels, so if you just need a bit of help at home (someone to vacuum, make the beds, that's one level), if you need more help at home eg some personal care, that's the next level and if you need to go into a care home that's another level. But insurance companies don't want to offer it because it's too expensive, which makes me think it really has to be a tax-payer thing. The government wastes a lot of money on far less needy projects/people, so I think the money could be found.

I saw nothing in the OP's post which said that people couldn't spend what they liked as they got older. I understood her to be referring to the deliberate stripping of assets as a way of passing everything onto your children rather than your own care.

There's a difference between board and lodging and medical care. It's perfectly reasonable to expect those who can afford to pay for their board and lodging to do so, and those who can't to get help - that's how the benefits system works (or should work) at any age. Medical care should be state funded.

Nobody is entitled to an inheritance if it means expecting other people to fund your lodging so that you can give money to your children. That said, I'm on a low income and I would like to leave something for my DS (and I looked after my own mother in her long, horrible, painful, joyless decline), so I'm another one for a one-way trip to Switzerland when it gets to that point.

You do realise that if this sort of care were taxpayer-funded, we'd all be paying at least 60% of our incomes in tax?

It's not sustainable. The OP is bang on.

Nor do I buy the argument that anybody would choose to spend their life on benefits in order to avoid care costs later in life. It would be rather cutting off one's nose to spite one's face, wouldn't it!