ATBU to do all they can to avoid paying for their care in old age?

[WateryTart]

Bit of a do in the village hall last night and we were sharing a table with a couple we only vaguely know. The conversation turned inevitably to the election and various hot issues.

The couple took early retirement and are in their 60s. They have already given their house to their DCs and pay them the going rate in rent. Plus they have made substantial trust funds for their DGCs. They give their DCs money towards their expenses, like a new car or home improvements. They are determined to have no savings or assets above the prescribed limit by the time they need care.

This is because the DW's father was in a nursing home for the last 3 years of his life which he had to pay for himself. In the next room was a man who bragged he was fully funded by the council. They found out the council only paid 2 thirds of what DF was paying so he was, in effect, subsidising this man as well as paying for himself.

I can see why they feel as they do, it's one thing to pay for yourself but quite another to pay for someone else as well.

They feel that in future everyone should have to take out insurance bonds in their 20s because either everyone should pay towards their care or no one should pay.

It was an interesting discussion. ATBU?

Fwiw, i don't plan to leave my house as inheritance for my children. I plan to downsize when the time comes and use any money to live on on my old age. I have only a pittance of a private pension as I have spent Most of my working age life being a full time carer to a disabled child.

Speaking as a nurse who work with a lot of elderly people who need long-term care, I would be wary of giving all of your assets away. Firstly because the local authority are very good at looking for asset deprivation or signs money has been given away. Secondly because the local authority will only pay the absolute minimum they can get away with if you can't afford your own care, you may therefore find yourself getting a very 'basic' care home (shared room, low staff numbers, cheap food etc) for your final days.

My view is that everyone who possible can should fund their own needs - whether that be by buying insurance, by creating savings, by moving to suitable properties as they get older etc etc - planning for 'normal' levels of need over an 'average' length of time. That then means that taxes can be used to take care of those who have not been able to fund themselves, or need above and beyond the norm - those with complex conditions, those who have not been able to accumulate any assets, those who need care much longer than the norm.

Why are insurances better than taxation? Insurance companies are there to make profit and do all they can not to pay out. People with pre-existing conditions have to pay much higher premiums. If the government attempts to address this unfairness it would mean means testing and further administration?

Why not just get the revenue from taxation?

That's the mark of a civilised society, to care for those who cannot necessarily pay the full cost themselves, surely?

Not sure about that. If you could have saved but chose not to, how is that fair? A compulsory bond for all would deal with that.

Havingahorridtime

I don't know much about this, but why wont the council pay for your FIL? Is it not a case of he'd have to use his pension and then the state would make up the rest? I thought that was how it worked.

I am POA for my mum who has Alzheimers. She has plenty of money. It means she has choices and this makes a big difference.

It meant that she could be discharged early following her last stay in hospital as I could lay on, expensive, 24 hour care which helped her retain her independent living skills.

It meant that four years ago following a hip replacement she could spend five weeks in a very lovely, and astonishingly expensive, convalescent home, with on site nursing care, which helped her back on her feet.

It meant that she could buy a two bed flat in a very sheltered housing development, which allows her the support she needs to stay out of a home.

It means that she can employ a lovely carer, and pay her well, which adds vastly to her quality of life and ability to remain "independent". (DPs chose to retire 150 miles from us.)

When the time comes it means she has a choice of care homes and so can go somewhere which best meets her needs.

OK she might be paying over the odds, and "subsidising" others, and she will pay a huge whack of IHT. But I would much prefer that the money was there for her, than passed down and spent by children and grandchildren. Its for us to make our own way. And by her paying there should be more safety net for those that need it.

Oddly by having the flexibility to buy in support when it is most needed, her care needs have been lower than they might otherwise have been, and overall costs lower than had she had to go into a home earlier.

Not sure about that. If you could have saved but chose not to, how is that fair? A compulsory bond for all would deal with that.

Why not more tax / NI? No-one has addressed this question yet.

Maybe they should take out some insurance. I don't have a problem with them continuing to help out kids and grandkids. But I think they will find that what was the situation a few yrs ago re council places and funding is no longer the case.

A more recent experience is my neighbours brother. Several strokes and almost completely paralysed neck down. Needs 24/7 care , bed and bath hoists etc. His wife is loosing her sight and is also elderly. They have been looking for a home for him to move into funded partly council and partly self. No joy at all - there simply were NO PLACES and where there were the home owners were asking for evidence of 250K in a bank account!! Which would have meant n council funding so a bit chicken and egg.

What I am saying is that if they can't pay then there are extremely limited council places that are then rock bottom. The council simply does not pay the costs that allow the care homes to make profit for the owners, the private sector does so they are preferred "guests" . I seriously believe these companies that run the homes ought to be not for profit - this allows a wage to be paid to those working but not masses of profits to be ripped out of the sytem.

Unless their kids look after them financially this couple are going to find themselves in very difficult circumstances

"why not more tax and NI" rather than a bond or insurance

mostly because the government is very good at moving money around and not leaving enough in the pot to cover what is supposed to be covered hence NHS and benefit/pension issues which is what NI was meant to be for

Why not more tax / NI? No-one has addressed this question yet.

Because it wouldn't be ring-fenced.

Yes. I think that they are being unreasonable. It is immoral to expect society to pick up the bill while their family walk away with the cash.

Well we need a government committed to using NI and revenue from taxation to support the NHS and people's care needs, don't we, RB...

Insurances are businesses. They want to make profits and avoid paying out. People with existing health conditions pay huge premiums, which are often unaffordable to a lot of people. It was why the NHS was created.

whatsin the council do an assessment of what care is required and then look at the persons income to decide how much they can afford to pay towards the care. The assessment didn't take into account the fact that my grandmother has no household bills and therefore all her income is disposable income. They just have a set figure that they say a person of her age needs to live on. So in my grandmothers case it was decided that she needs to keep at least £205 per week to meet her basic living costs (I'm not sure if the attendance allowance is included in the assessment figures).
My FIL has much less than £205 per week disposable income as he has to pay council tax, water, utilities etc and has a large loan for essential work he had done to his house. If he was to pay the full cost of his care (which he was assessed as being able to afford) he would have no money left to feed himself. So he is reliant on his family to come and do his cleaning, shopping, washing etc instead.

Even if they moved their assets over to their children if they ever needed to go in to a care home all their pension will be taken off them to pay for their care and their kids will be made to pay the top up. As from next year all families will be made to pay the top for their parents in care homes.

I think they should offer the option of assisted suicide to people who just don't want to spend their money or assets on care. I have a ds who is autistic and I don't know if he'll be able to support himself through full employment when he's older. Me and dh definitely want to make provision for him and would rather die than be unable to do that. I would resent being forced to pay for care when I didn't wish to continue living. Some people can end up spending a decade in a care home. That's not what I want for my life at all.

It costs around £10,000 for a full Dignitas package, including paperwork and cremation. Why should people be expected to pay all this when the drugs cost mere £s?

Time to get pragmatic even if it offends the god botherers and sentimentalists.

Medical insurance wasn't available generally when NHS was created - it was pay for it yourself or do without - just about penny clubs existed with individual Dr's. Some insurance companies are not profit making but mutuals or similar and so whilst they do restrict what they pay out to what is in the policy or what was insured they are not making massive profits for shareholders who are generally big pension funds....

Re the government that does use monies etc Clarity - well none of them have so far and you know what they say about promises...

None of them are addressing the root causes here and for me that is we need a none politicised administration system that has a defined minimum service level and funding. Why the hell should cancer funding/autism diagnosis and how much you can live on depend on who is sitting in the prime ministers seat.

I can see why they feel as they do, it's one thing to pay for yourself but quite another to pay for someone else as well.

But isn't that in essence how any aspect of the welfare state works? I don't see a problem with it. Turn it around a little. If they don't pay for their care then the taxpayer has to. That's me. Why should I pay for them just so they can give their kids an inheritance?

I've worked most of my life - but since the children were born in low paid but flexible jobs. I rent and now live alone, still working in a low paid job (because, oddly, there aren't that many well paid full time jobs that suddenly open up to you when you're over fifty), and I'm terrified.

I've got a pittance of a private pension, no savings or investments and if anything happens to me I'm better off taking myself away off out of it all than watching my kids (who all work full time) try to accommodate me in their rented flats and care for me.

Why should I pay for them just so they can give their kids an inheritance?

Because you're already paying for the chap in the next room who chose not to save.

helpimichty, your post at 11:21 is absolutely terrifying. Take it one step further and people would be questioning spending money on the Dignitas package, as a natural death of hyperthermia for example, costs nothing, doesn't it?

Are people's lives worth so little?

maybe if our society had been run on a much fairer basis like, say, Norway, we would be sitting on a massive sovereign wealth fund that could be used to build care centres, properly train the staff and pay them a decent wage?
Sadly, thatcher and her successors (and I include Blair here) decided to piss-away our assets and hand it over to the already wealthy. There can only now be two outcomes:

1. a two-tier system where the frail poor live in modern-day work houses and the unwell rich live in luxury.
2. We pull our finger out, stop playing macho war-games with stupid things like trident, implement a proper fund-raising tax system that is fair and start building up the funding to provide care for all.

Given my experiences of the past 50 years, I expect most people will walk blindly into option 1, led by the right-wing press and lying politicians.

I suppose what I am saying about care homes is that the current system isn't working - it relies on private commercial companies to run them and there is no balancing out of costs so you won find homes in more affluent areas where property prices are high because in accounting terms (that take into account sq ft costs etc) it is not as profitable as one in lower cost areas. They look for maximum profit - by keeping staff costs v low, providing minimal and poor equipment (no view to long term), providing lower quality and poorer nutritional value food and all of this leads to reduced life length (turnover of clients and opps to increase prices) and health quality (again opportunity to charge more). Commerciality can bring more efficiency into a system but it can also mean more taken out over long term and shorter life of companies running homes (and impact on patients) so overall I am not convinced that fully commercial is right for this market. There is not a simple answer of throw more money at it - it needs a complete system overhaul with a long term view and upfront funding.

Because you're already paying for the chap in the next room who chose not to save

So by your logic we should just scrap the entire welfare state then. Is that what you really want?

Are people's lives worth so little?

My point being that some people don't have the money to even visit Dignitas. People should at least be given the choice as to what they spend their money on. It's not as simple as what is someone's life worth. I'll leave that question up to religion, philosophy and the ethicists. All I care about is my own practical arrangements for my dcs. Only those with £££s in the bank can afford to hand wring and navel gaze. With the way health provision and social care is being dismantled I'd rather not be at the mercy of the authorities either way thanks very much.

Tax the unearned wealth of the end users rather than people's incomes/salaries of the working few.

My partner and I as a household pay in far more than we'll ever take out (im a high earner he's v high) and I don't want to pay more tax to subsidise someone else's inheritance thanks. We are both v lucky to have high paying jobs in a good industry, I get that, and I don't resent paying a lot of tax towards the system generally. That's fair and equitable. But I'm fucked if we're paying in 45-55% of our salaries to subsidise the inheritance of some baby boomer who bought a house for £16k in 1973 which is now worth £1.5m - and round our way they are. Fuck off. I personally loved Theresa May's £100k inheritance protection use your house to pay for your care plan and think it's a damned shame the politicians and media spun it into a u-turn. The vast majority of home owning oldies have benefitted from decades of unprecedented house price growth. Decades. Yes there are pockets/areas where it's been less inflatory, but on the whole they've "won" the house price game.

They've done nothing to earn that wealth, they have it by virtue of being born at the right time and buying a home when it was affordable. They also generally have amazing pensions vs what's on offer now.