To think families are going to have to look after their own old people?

[ElderAve]

It's not a judgement, the idea fills me with dread but how else are we supposed to pay for it? In a world where:

• It's political suicide to suggest that people who have valuable homes, they are no longer living in should use that value to pay for care.
• Everyone should be paid a proper living wage.
• We have increasing numbers of people needing care.

For example, between DH and I we have 4 elderly parents, still very much fit and well, but realistically, that can't carry on forever. Those parents have 4 working offspring.

I don't know how many residents a care home worker can care for but let's say it's 12, which to provide 24hr care means 3 shifts, so the equivalent of 1 full person to care for our 4 parents. That means that the state needs to raise tax equivalent to 1 (living wage) salary from the four of us and that's before paying for schools, hospitals etc.

Obviously not everyone has elderly parents needing care but those will often be heavy users of the schools system and we still need to pay for all the other services.

I just can't see how the state can do it, if they keep promising not to take the elderly's homes, which is so emotive.

wanting two incomes for the lifestyle
I can only think that when she says 'lifestyle' she means anything which is goes beyond living at substance level with a dirt floor and 3 generations crammed into 2 rooms while sharing a bathroom with 5 other multi-generational overcrowded families?
Yep, if you have ambitions which go further than that you are just a selfish person shirking their caring duties

It's political suicide to suggest that people who have valuable homes, they are no longer living in should use that value to pay for care

But it isn’t political suicide. It’s what happens now and numerous governments have been elected with that policy in place. If you live in a care home you no longer need your home, ergo it pays for where you currently live, ie the care home. Nobody’s entitled to an inheritance, you’re just lucky if you get one.

To add to property being used to pay for care homes, isn't a person's state pension used to pay for care too where their care is all or part funded by the council?

It's a lol way off but I love hundreds of miles away from my parents... are my partner and I supposed to go all the way there losing our jobs to care for them or are they supposed to leave everything they've ever known and their other family and come here?

Then what about DP parents who live the opposite way? Are we supposed to split up until they die?

Then what about DP parents who live the opposite way? Are we supposed to split up until they die?

Apparently so. No such thing as impossible. Duty comes first.

It was explained already alsohuman but that's only a small percentage of the people who need care. Lots and lots of adult social care is provided gratis, in many cases to people who have assets.

Theresa May in 2017 proposed that more people receiving care should fund it themselves but that the cap could be raised from 23k to 100k, and the furious response may well be what cost her the election.

Lots and lots of adult social care is provided gratis, in many cases to people who have assets

If you’re referring to Continuing Health Care funding, that’s the theory. In practice, it’s well nigh impossible to get. I know, we tried. And, as I was working in the NHS at the time, I knew exactly how the assessment works. No joy. In retrospect I’m glad because the money was there for the care and it was right that it was used for it.

If it is indeed a small percentage of people who require residential care, then it makes sense to insure assets against any kind of government demands.

I don’t see how it could possibly be exceptional, though? I thought Alzheimer’s/dementia complications were the leading cause of death in the UK.

Dementia/Alzheimer’s is the single largest cause of death for women and the second largest for men (if you count cancers individually) but that’s still only about 12% of all deaths.

I work in the age sector. The thing with the insurance suggestion is that having been to several conferences with insurance companies around this, they’re not really interested in providing products. There’s too much uncertainty to properly predict risk which makes them very expensive for customers. If insurance companies thought there was money in this area they’d already be doing it but other than the odd one or two, they’re not.

www.ft.com/content/5a5d8d1e-03a4-11e9-9d01-cd4d49afbbe3

There are family members of mine who got it alsohuman. Anyway though, formally expanding the requirement to pay for care beyond those who already have to is electoral suicide, and the response to May's proposals in 2017 shows that. Sensibly or otherwise.

Re the insurance industry, David Cameron while PM was trying to implement reforms that would allow people to pay insurance against the costs of care and in turn limit the amount of their assets that could be taken to fund it. The industry wasn't up for it.

www.ft.com/content/b9c248d4-d679-11e7-8c9a-d9c0a5c8d5c9

I can quite understand that to be honest.

They were extremely lucky @MarchDaffs, because it was virtually impossible to get it in 2015 and friends tell me now that they can’t even get an assessment. Perhaps your family members got it pre austerity.

Anyway the fact is that the majority of people who need residential care in old age pay for it which, if it goes on for any length of time, means selling the house. The reason May’s proposals didn’t fly is because she intended to apply the same criteria to care provided at home, currently the value of a house isn’t included in that because it remains the patient’s home.

Nope, in 2017 and 2019. But we might be talking about something different here because mine got care at home. Lucky or not though, the response to the so called dementia tax, actually the fact that it was even referred to as that, is what tells us that it's electoral suicide. And yes of course the fact that she wanted to apply the same criteria to care provided at home is why they didn't fly: that's the point!

We are talking about something different. Residential care is a completely different ball game. For care at home, once you have less than £23.5k in the bank you’re funded. I’m not fussed about that because you’re still living in your home but I think it’s right that, once you don’t need it, the proceeds are used to fund your care. Why should a tax payer with no hope of ever owning a house fund someone else’s inheritance?

Yes, it seems we are. Residential care is only a part of the whole picture.

I don't disagree on the care home point, but while I didn't necessarily support May's proposals I thought the principles underpinning the idea were arguably better than those we currently have. The current model isn't sustainable anyway, I know that much.

There is a postcode lottery about continuing care. It is much easier (or probably less hard) to get in some health authorities than others.

I think that’s true. Someone I know got it in another county and they wouldn’t have stood a hope in hell here.

I looked at the statistics after being rejected (and rejected again) for mil's care. My health authority is notorious for the low success rate.

Doesn't surprise me

Relative came out of hospital into their own home
Free care was provided for 6 weeks, 4 carers a day. A district nurse also visited sometimes.

It was decided, as their health improved that they would continue to pay for some reduced care for a short period

I live 100s of miles away, but I visited regularly

It was a very tough time. The relative was fortunate that their health improved ( not back to 100 percent)
Not everyones health improves

Should I have given up my career & life where I live ?

The relative doesn't want to live with me

I continue with visits

Op, you have no idea about other people's lives or illnesses !

Tried to get care for my aunt post 2010. None to be had. Didn’t even get an assessment.

Thanks for the FT articles, interesting.

I can appreciate that the cost of care is too variable to insure, but it seems like there should be a viable option to insure the value of your house i.e. if you have 500K of equity, the insurer hands up to 500K over to the state on your behalf should you need long-term care and the state picks up the tab for the rest leaving your house untouched.

In all cases the state should avoid lottery or reverse-lottery situations e.g. dementia strips you of your assets/cancer does not because they're fundamentally unfair and distort behaviour.

I think the difficulty with insurance is that for the private sector to be willing to touch it, the premiums would be more than most people are willing and able to pay. It would probably need to be state backed. Can't call it national insurance though as that's already taken!