Tory policy. Please explain the £8000 premium for free nursing care

[jollydiane]

I am confused so I hope you clever Tories will explain to me how just by paying £8000 you can guarantee that you do not have to sell your home.

1. What does the £8000 actually guarantee?
2. What standard of nursing care will be available?
3. Do you choose the nursing home? If you do what?s to stop me choosing a 5 star luxury nursing home and live life in style.
4. If there are no places in the area that you leave will you be forced to move?
5. The baby boomers are about to retire. Help me understand how the one off payment of £8000 is going to last for 20 years of nursing home care?

When you start to examine the details this seems like a bribe to the baby boomers at the expense of the grandchildren that will be paying for it.

jd

Please debate with me as I am willing to change my mind?

This is confusing the hell out of me too. I cannot see how it would work at all..........and i'm planning on voting Tory!

I thought it was basically a government insurance - I think it's based on the average cost of nursing home care for the elderly. I read somewhere that the average stay was around 2 and a bit years. And some people who paid for it wouldn't end up using it (just like all the other insurance we pay for) so if it's costed right, it'd be self funding (and sounds like a good deal to me, I'd happily pay that).

How it would work in terms of choosing a home is a different matter, clarification on that would be good. Anyone know?

It seems like a fantastic deal, and that is my point. How can we possibly afford it.

because it's based on the average cost - so unless people started living longer (ie it was costed wrong) it should be self-supporting.

Lets take things to the extreme. Lets say I set up the "if Carlesburg did nursing homes" type business. The best food, the best entertainment.

Lets say I am 65 and I think cor look at the JollyDiane nursing home, that looks fab. I think I'll move in. Great. No costs for me as I have paid £8000 and thats that.

It would not work it would cost to much. So there must be some detail that states you have to be really ill otherwise I might just go into the nursing home business and make my fortune.

Thanks Riven.

Perhaps they're planning on bumping them all off after the 16 weeks are up?

Seriously, I do not see how this policy can work. We have been looking into care homes for my dad (alzheimers but in good physical health) and unless we are happy to see him in a piss-stinking shit-hole (and I err on the generous side in my description) it's going to be about £700 a week. No way does his pension cover that, and my parents' house is worth at most £200k and that's looking on the generous side (they live in Merseyside), so that would have to be sold when my mum dies to cover the costs. And then my living at home brother with CP and mental health issues would to have nowhere to live.

Mum is going mad with worry. If she thought she could pay £8k up front and get him decent care she would, but do you really think that's likely?

Why is it so wrong for people to sell their homes or use equity release? It makes perfect sense to me.

Makes sense to me too Rene. People of my Fathers generation have a huge sense of entitlement and they actually believe that the NHS can take us from the cradle to the grave!

Well it's not 1946 anymore and things are different now Pops!

I have il's who are at the GP surgery weekly for niggles and won't take a paracetomol unless they are instructed too!

These are intelligent people but they honestly believe that they have "paid in all their lives" so are entitled to everything. It's a worry.

LoveCat have you looked into whether they can force your brother to move out? Or it may be possible for your mum to sell now and provide a seperate small dwelling for your brother if he is entitled to disability living allowance - it is certainly worth speaking to a solicitor who specialises in this area to look at your specific situation. Does your brother have a social worker?

Lovecat I am sorry for the situation that your family find itself in.

I don't think it is honest of the Tories to suggest that by paying £8000 will solve everyone's situation. Just do the maths. It cannot work. If gives false hope as people should not be fooled.

Happy to be proved wrong...so come on Tories explain it to me.

There are a lot of people who don't go into care homes in their twilight years but you can bet if they've paid upfront to do so then more will take the option.

I'm another who doesn't see the problem with paying for your own care if you can afford it, the idea of needing to pass on money is an odd one to me.

From memory, wasn't something like 20% or fewer who would need to get care in a home, so (a) the amount would be 8,000 paid in, but the combined sum (ie 40,000) available to pay out to a home and (b) a person wouldn't "take the option" but need medical report to consider them eligible.

It might well work. I think I'd be tempted, knowing that whatever else I had in my estate could go to my relatives, and not be "recovered" by the local social services for money paid out.

I suspect there would be some growth in the number of suitable care homes, and given the funding could be coming mostly from central funds, that they'd have many more "random" inspections so that mistreatment of any old people would be reduced to an absolute minimum.

Isn't another way of the more well off people being able to afford the £8,000 premium and then getting to keep their house etc and the people with less won't be able to so their houses will have to be sold.......?

So nobody has been able to give actual details of how it would work then.

Exactly CarGirl, how many ordinary folk have got a spare £8k kicking about when they reach 65?

The only folk this is going to benefit is those with a stash of readies at hand. So once again, the best off get the best deal, same old, same old.

The basic pro is that you can get £8k from equity release, which is a tiny amount of the capital of your house, and that g'tees you get to keep your home no matter what. Labour has been stealing houses of the old to pay for health care for 14 years, and its scandalous.

If you're talking equity release then the fact is you'll be paying a hell of lot more than £8k.

I worked in financial services and our organisation banned the sale of these products as they were considered so dodgy.

When you take equity release, you pay nothing till your dead. Weve just drawn £18k out, which is about 1/7 of the value. If i live another 30 years, when i die and they settle up ill owe them £80k, but then at the historic average house price rise, this place will be worth £500k, so its still about the same percentage. And i make no payments while im alive, it costs us nothing.

Taking 8k equity out so you can keep your home and get nursing home care is fantastic value for money, and far better than having your house sold from under you when your ill, as per the labour way.

If the government takes all those £8k's and invests it, they can provide the care off the interest alone.

Past Performance is no guarantee to future results lincstash.

A lot of people got badly bitten by these products in the 80's and 90's, particularly in the recession in the early 90's when house prices fell through the floor and interest rates rocketed to 15%.

I know that the products have supposedly improved since then, but it's not that long ago - last year maybe - where there was a program on with folk owing thousands and thousands more than they thought and other folk in negative equity.

In general, it's not the companies selling these products who are taking the risks.

Thank you for your answers, however the details are still not clear.

How ill do you have to be to take advantage of the scheme?

Can you go to any nursing home regardless of the costs? I doubt it so what are the rules?

Come on Tories explain yourselves.

I haven't looked at the policy but I imagine there will certainly be weekly a limit on it. Some nursing homes cost a thousand pound a week or more.

The free personal care payment in Scotland is something in the region of £220 a week for people going into nursing homes, so most people have to sell their houses anyway in order to meet the rest of the cost. Unless they have a lot of money in the bank, besides their house.

I don't agree with the fact that people can have millions in the bank and a million pound house and still get the payment. It is taking money away from other essential services imo.

They're looking into that at the moment, cargirl. Haven't given up as yet! Thanks for your comments (and Jollydiane!)

DB hasn't got a social worker, his CP is fairly mild, affects his co-ordination quite badly but he can walk and look after himself, although his social skills are sadly lacking and if mum didn't get after him he wouldn't wash.

If it were just that I don't think they'd be so worried, but he has developed mental health issues since being attacked at work and lost his job when he kept having panic attacks if someone raised their voice to him (worked in the CAB). He's now long-term unemployed, on ADs, still waiting after several years to actually get some NHS therapy (that's a whole other story), doesn't like leaving the house and reacts angrily/violently to change (from a distance and having met people with Asbergers, I suspect he's actually somewhere on the ASD spectrum but undiagnosed). So....

Anyway, I don't want to hijack the thread with my personal stuff, I too would like a Tory to come and explain how exactly this scheme is going to work?