So many in the UK have a capitalist mindset and it makes them grabby. People confuse Income Tax and National Insurance with a personal insurance plan. It isn't.
It's not something you pay into and then when you personally fall on what you consider to be hard times, it pays out for you. It's funding the government, who are there to help the people. Government decides where the Income Tax and National Insurance is spent. It goes on a great many things, it isn't collected up and divvied out purely for health and social care. The government have criteria for those in need which are very strict, you have to be suffering already to meet the criteria for help and it's means-tested.
The fact that a person has eg £20k in investments or eg owns a property worth £100k and doesn't want to spend that money on care is irrelevant. It's about needs not wants . If you have money to pay for your care then you're not in need of government assistance.
It comes down to people being jealous of those with less than them. Which is totally warped. The reason people get government assistance is because they have nothing. There's literally nothing to be jealous of!
If people wanted it to be a system of a flat rate national care available to all without means-testing and also without taxes going sky-high, it would mean such a low base level of care that poor people would suffer despite receiving it, which is inhumane. Whilst rich people, who obviously wouldn't want to suffer unnecessarily, would end up selling their houses and spending their savings anyway to top up the care they received for free, to make it sufficient for their needs.
Sure, maybe their children might inherit something if they don't take a long time to die, but if those adult children are happy to inherit at the expense of someone else receiving insufficient help and suffering as a result, then they're selfish scum. Unfortunately, a great many people are selfish. They might not consider themselves to be scum, but that's a matter of opinion.
People need a mindset shift in the UK to stop viewing houses as an investment or an inheritance and start viewing them as a home. Paying off a mortgage over a lifetime will cost less than renting, once it's paid for there's no more cost (to state the obvious) and is also a permanent home. Renters rarely have the security of a permanent home and the rental cost never stops until they die. Maybe, if they're poor enough, they'll get some housing benefit to help pay for it, but it's rarely enough to cover the entire cost of the rent. If people could appreciate the benefits of home ownership, the costs it saves them over a lifetime and the security it provides, they'd see that even if it's sold in old age to pay for care, they've still "won" compared those who rent.
It's such a myth that those with nothing, have nothing through choice. A myth that they've chosen not to work and that's why they have nothing. As if their poverty is their own fault. The government criteria for unemployment benefits are strict, you're not entitled to them by choosing not to work.
There's so much judgement of people who don't work, by people who can't see a reason why they don't work and who don't stop to think about that. Just because you can't see something that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. We live in what is supposed to be an equal society. Nobody owes an explanation or justification for their existence to anyone else, except the government if you need assistance from them. Yet that's what all the jealous people are expecting. They don't mind genuine benefits claimants, the inference being that anyone who hasn't justified their situation to that jealous person individually isn't genuine but a fraudster.
Jealousy is such a useless emotion, harming everyone it comes into contact with. The jealous homeowner can't see what they have/have had over their lifetime (security, choice and peace of mind), only what they haven't got (government assistance for care). The people who they're jealous of and who already have less than them, suffer further due to campaigns and voting strategies by the jealous people who are trying to feed that endlessly green-eyed-monster by taking from others.
The trouble with jealousy is it's never satisfied. Maybe people who have nothing should be given nothing, so that the jealous people can have it instead, with the poor left to die in the streets? Except that wouldn't make the jealous people happy either would it? Dead bodies decomposing everywhere. Especially if, through unfortunate circumstances, they or their relative became the poor person themselves. They don't want to witness suffering or the effects of it and they don't want to suffer themselves. They just can't see past the tunnel vision of wanting what someone else has and it consumes them.
Selfish people who can't get their own way do often consider it a travesty, OP.