To think that if you have the funds to pay for your care home needs then you absoloutley should?

[BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz]

Interesting chat with a friend the other day about the extortionate costs of care homes and how if you live in social housing/rental and are on benefits then the government will pay for your care yet if you have "worked hard all your life and want to leave something for your kids" you are made to sell your home / use savings to pay for your care.

Friend is of the opinion that everyone who requires a care home should have it paid for by the government. So essentially a "hand out" yet also is of the opinion that those on benefits are getting "hand outs" and looks on them with scorn.

My personal opinion is that if you have the means to fund your own care home needs then yes; you absoloutley should pay for some or all of that. Why should the government fork out millions for every care home resident in the country so that a vast amount of them can then hand their properties and extensive savings down to their children?

It's simply not viable to fund 100% of care home needs across the country and if you are the kind of person who gets smug about "paying my way all my life" to the tune of living mortgage free in a 300k plus home with vast savings then you should be happy to continue "paying your way" til the end.

I also pointed out to her that as she will be funding her own care she will likely have more say in where she goes.

The end result was we both agreed the best solution was to swerve the care home altogether but I wondered whether I was BU to expect someone who can afford to pay for their care to actually pay for their care?

I am in two minds about this. Whilst I agree, the government cannot and should not fund every persons care needs, it is a little unfair I feel to expect someone to sell everything they own and have worked hard for, leaving next to nothing for the family left behind. Whilst I personally have said to my parents that I don’t WANT their money, they are to spend it as they see fit, I know full well they want me and my brother to benefit from the home they have worked so hard for. It does stick a little for me that someone who has effectively had ‘hand outs’ their entire life, could end up in the same care home as my parents who are paying through the nose for it. I do sometimes wonder why we are busting a gut trying to pay off a mortgage? It’s a tricky one for sure!

I agree with you. The alternative is to raise taxes so the working people find it much harder to acquire the wealth they so keenly want to hand over to their kids.

Healthcare, basic pensions and education is part of the agreement with have with the gov’ment when we pay tax. Unlimited care is not.

Personally I’m hoping it’ll be easier to pop off to Dignitas or similar when the time comes...

I'm so on the fence with this that I can't vote one way or another! Care homes have to be paid for somehow though, if not by selling houses etc then probably more inheritance tax - and again it would be the "hard workers"* who have more to be taxed.

• though I hate this term as lots of people work hard but get paid very little

My grandma has paid over 100k for her care, her neighbour in the care home has paid zero. And you think that's fair?

I think this is the problem with the NHS and the mentality its installed in people. People now expect everything for free with regards to health. Its just not viable.

Scarfaceclaw21
It doesn't seem fair, no. But which would you rather:
A. Current situation
B. Higher inheritance tax so burden of paying for care shared by all who have £ to leave even if they don't use it
C. Higher taxes for everyone all the time
D. No care for people who can't afford it
E. Minimal, workhouse style, care for thosr who can't afford better

To take your view to its logical conclusion OP, perhaps we should all ensure we keep our earnings low enough our entire lives to qualify us for benefits and social housing, thereby ensuring that we don’t have the pressure of working longer hours, earning more money, just to have it taken off us

Oh hang on, who would pay the taxes to enable that to happen ..

@Scarfaceclaw21

No, that's not fair at all.

Just as it's not fair that I work hard and my neighbours with 7 kids never have. The problem is the system in both cases.

I don't know the solution, but I'm not against people paying for their living costs etc and that goes right across the board from when they become financially independent right up until they die.

I do think there needs to be a major shake up of how things are are done, I just have no idea what would work not my neighbours

The government can't bear the cost of care and housing for every person in the country, we are already on our arse here

Higher taxes to fund this, cut the foreign aid budget to zero, refuse any treatment to health tourists. This would be a start.

To be honest I disagree. I dont see why one person should pay thousands of pounds for care, while someone else gets the same care for free. In fact, the person paying has to pay twice, as the taxes they paid while working have contributed to the care of those who are getting it free.

Well said @acciocats

I am in two minds about this, in that my wealth is for me to spend on me so i should use it to buy my care.
But on the otherhand if you have 3 families with assets to pass on to the next generation. Family 1 passess the whole lot on as their parent had heart disease and died suddenly. Family 2 passes most of it on because they had cancer and the state funded their care, but the family supplemented it a bit. Family 3 passess none of it on as they had dementia and had 5 years round the clock care. I guess famiky 4 had nothing the state paid for their care and they still have nothing.
Our whole tax system is based on spreading the load so actually the fairer thing is to recognise care is a big deal and increase inheritance tax hugely and ring fence it for care. So each family only got a much smaller inheritance. But people probably prefer the situation as it is.

I agree that if you have the funds to pay for your care then you should do so. I don't think anyone is entitled to leave an inheritance for their kids and have their care funded by the tax payer if they have loads of money sitting in the bank. Yes it's nice if you are able to leave some inheritance but I believe that funding your own costs first is the priority. With people living longer and longer and many children not willing or able to take on the carer responsibility more and more old people are spending the last years of their lives in the care homes and I think its only right that they pay for this service if they can afford to. In my opinion its just one of the consequences of getting old and it is something that should be planned for and factored in to the decision making process when saving money and making investments.

My grandma has recently gone in to a care home and is expected to sell her house to cover the costs. I have lost count of the number of times thaat my parents have complained that they are going to get no inheritance and their entitlement drives me mad. They are both in their early 50s, have no mortgage or dependant children, work full time with no health issues, have decent pensions and investments and live in a house worth about half a million in a town where average house prices are below 200k so in my opinion they are very well off and wouldn't really benefit from the money but they still resent the fact that its being used to pay for a nursing home for my grandma.
It's not a nice situation for my grandma and the sale of her house will be quite upsetting for her due to the memories and clearing out a lot of the stuff of sentemental value that she doesn't have space for in the nursing home but I feel that its tge correct thing to do rather than rely on taxes to cover the cost when there are already so many other areas that are under financial pressure and could benefit from the extra investment. The aging population have a massive financial impact on various areas of society and they already benefit from free or subsidised services that the younger generation would be expected to pay for so I think it's only fair to expect them to fund their own living costsif they are able to.

I agree with Startsat, it's not 'fair' but there's no obvious other way. Say there were two young people living next door to each other, both earning but struggling on £20k a year, would it be fair to raise the taxes of one so that the other could inherit a large sum saved from their parent not having to pay fees?

You're absolutely right. Care home fees are a handout, paid for by everyone's taxes. I don't want to give handouts to people who are sitting on a pile of cash. No way.

I agree with the OP. If you can afford to pay then you should.

Or they introduce a big inheritance tax (e.g. 60% and a very low threshold) to pay for it that way.

I’m in the process of selling my aunt’s house to pay for her care. This is fair enough.

But when the money runs out she will have to leave her expensive care home and have the most basic kind because that’s what the state pays for. That is what I think is unfair. Once you have nothing left, what you get is is a place I wouldn’t keep a dog in. Pray for me she dies first.

Council run care isn't always sunshine and flowers and free care. It was horrific - elderly crammed in in a circle in the living room, day after day after day. No one being taken out, because the council didn't have the money for it. Staff who didn't give shit. Urine patches here and there. It was horrific, and if I hadn't been a teenager and had money of my own, and if my nan had had her own property, I could've got her into private, better care. But I couldn't, and she was stuck in shit holes. Just because it's free, doesn't mean it's always better.

Now you are looking at it properly. It has taken a while for such threads to start actually looking at the cause rather than demonising those who take advantage of the system.

Our welfare state was always supposed to be to support those in need until they 'got back on their feet' (people unable to work were supported forever with a lot of family and charitable aid included).

Then something changed and welfare became more of a right. The State couldn't stop or reduce payments cos "think of the children" and then the welfare recieved had to provide a 'humane standard of living'. Roll that out over a few decades and we now have a whole bundle of other credits to support families.

At what cost? I don't mean taxes. I mean it opened the door for the Gig Economy - something I remember being decried as something the UK simply wouldn't allow... and then Mr Brown changed the rules to help employers during the recession... and now companies don't have to pick up the tab via proper work contracts, working hours, pay levels etc, tax payers do!

Lots of other changes too, mainly a very quick adoption of all the new credits as 'rights'. So now how do you unpick that mess and put the onus on employers to pay fairly and people to go to work, instead of both halves relying on various credits to make the system turn?

We have made ourselves a mess... care homes are not the only services that are provided 'unfairly'.

Like you said, it’s simply not viable to finance 100% of everyone’s care costs - so people who have the ability to pay for care in old age absolutely should.

I don’t want to pay increased taxes to cover care in old age so people can leave property and money to their children - why should I fund their inheritance ?

State funded care is often not 'the same care' as privately funded care. The council pays far less to care homes than care homes charge private payers, and the difference is often very noticeable. Private care homes have more staff, better food, more activities, better facilities, the lot. (South East England). In homes that have both state funded and privately funded residents the private payers generally subsidise the state funded residents.

It all comes down to money. If we want everyone to have high quality state funded care we will have to pay higher taxes.

Ironically old age pensions are one of the largest portions of government spending already.

as she will be funding her own care she will likely have more say in where she goes.

There isn't that much choice though. It comes down to whatever place is close enough to the spouse who still has enough marbles and physical ability to stay in the family house but is elderly themselves and not up to driving miles in the dark and the rain every day to visit.

By the time you're physically and/or mentally (often both together) stuffed enough to need a care home then the timespan you have to avail of the full benefit of the posh ones is limited, before either you don't notice the lavishly sculpted garden or you get kicked out to a home which can cope with your needs.

The basic problem with care homes is that ideally all the other inmates would be younger and and at least as with-it as you so you can have stimulating conversations and make nice friends. Obviously only one person can be in that happy position, and not for long. You go in being a bit disappointed at being surrounded by doddery old people calling out at all hours for nurse to help them to the toilet and pretty soon you are one of them. Then you get kicked out to a home where help to the toilet involves two people and a hoist. Then no toilet but two people trained in rolling techniques for pad changes.
If you do make a nice friend, unless you are lucky one of you will deteriorate faster than the other and get carted off to a different home, or one of you will die in the night. The average lifespan of people in homes seems to be quite short- not because homes are shit but because everyone quite understandably avoids going in for as long as possible so the population entering a home is quite old and afflicted with various co morbidities already.

@BeanBag7

To be honest I disagree. I dont see why one person should pay thousands of pounds for care, while someone else gets the same care for free

Right, that element is not fair. But the solution should be to look into how everybody can pay something, rather then everyone pays nothing.

I just dont think it's as simple as wrong or right.

The situation, as is, that people who are working are simply working to fund their care fees.

The woman I live next door to has one adult son and never worked full time. Financially we are pretty equal. She encourages h2r son to stay living with hee, because she cant afford the house if he leaves. Council house, he pays rent (as he should) but at no point has she increased her hours when he was older or even now. She doesnt see why she should have to. She is very annoyed that benefits wont help her pay her bills. Despite being in her 40s and fit and healthy.

Both of us could end up in the same care home. I could have spanked my divorce money and still got a council house on the same street, I bought on.

But those were my choices. Her are different. She is a pleasant neighbour and that's all that impacts me.

I bought to leave my kids something. I may not be able to.

I dont think the current system is fair. I simply dont. But I also am not sure what a fair solution would be.

I absolutely agree OP. I say this as someone with a parent in a care home, who is paying for herself through house sale and substantial pension. Why should the taxpayer fund this - my parent wouldn't benefit personally in any case, it would be me that benefits through inheritance. Why on earth should people who have far less money pay through their taxes for my inheritance?