Who should pay?

[observer]

...... for elderly care?  The individual through sale of their assets (assuming they have any) or the tax-payer?

[Evil Sid]

As always the answer to that question is a definite yes.

 

As most people have assets of over the twenty three thousand pound cap (that includes the price of any property owned outright by them) then it has always been that assets would be sold off to pay for their care until the money ran out, after which the state would take up the slack. considering that a care home costs about £600 per week, more for a nursing home, average cost for a year would be £31,200 per year. So if your assets were £100,000 then you should have three years of care home payments before you were skint. That is assuming you were a single person.

 

so if you go into a care home at say eighty and live until you are ninety you would expect the state to fork out for the extra seven years shortfall, the chances are that they would look to putting you in cheaper accommodation though.

 

If you have specialist need then the cost could be double that. Think BUPA ones start at about £550 and can go up to £1200 depending on your care needs.

[Bazj]

People should not have to sell their assets in order to fund care.... that is my opinion.

 

Why should someone who has worked all their lives have to do this and then their assets get sold to pay for other people in the same care home who weren't so frugal? There is no way that it costs £600 a week to keep someone in a care home when the staff are generally on minimum wage and the council run places are anything but salubrious... unless the council are using the figure in order to get as much back from the "paying guests" as they can in the short time they are likely to be with them

 

I went through this with my mum a few years ago; the council were very keen to get her in a home; but only once they realised she owned her own home, and the impression I got before they found out was that they were more willing to have her looked after at home. In the end she stayed and ultimately died in the house where she had lived for over 80 years (which incidentally was what SHE always wanted) It took a lot of work on my part to keep her there (including spending many nights away from my home so I could sit with her and sleep at her house) but at the end of the day she was my mum and who was I to abandon her into some council run place just so I could have an easier life for a few years?

 

The only fair way to do things would be to make the children of the older people liable for the costs involved in keeping someone in a council run home. That way; even if the person had no assets, the costs would not have to be met by a few individual old folk.... it may also mean that kids actually returned a bit of that love and care that their parents afforded them in the past and stopped them being palmed off on the state until it was an absolute necessity

 

[Davy51]

But it does come down to the old chestnut about working & doing your bit  to provide for yourself & your family ,even into old age, whereas the benefit class whose lifestyle your NI payments & taxes have been funding  ,just carry on without a care in the world in the knowledge that everything will be provided.Even when it comes down to new fuel efficient boilers ,it all comes down to what qualifying benefits you are on or everything is full price.Even the extreme cold weather payments are available on tap to benefit claimants....you save for your old age or have a private/company pension & your screwed.

 

Wasn't something mentioned on the news though about taking house values seperate from the £23000 figure ,& property value only coming into play after death ?

[Bazj]

Davy.... when my mum was alive, she lived on her own in her three bed house. It had one downstairs living room, a kitchen and a utility room extension which I built a few years before she died.

 

She had an old (25 years old) central heating boiler that I replaced only 8 months before she died.

 

Every year she got her winter fuel payment, she didn't pay for a TV license and paid 50% poll tax because she lived on her own. Apart from her standard government pension, she got a private pension payment from my dads' Crosfield pension which worked out at about £25.00 a week.

 

Before she had a stroke when she was 85 (about 5 years before she died), she used to go out to arts and craft lessons via the collegiate and led quite an active life; using the free bus pass to go into town a good few times a week.

 

She had some savings, but very rarely used any and often put money into the bank rather than take it out. When winter came, she would sit in the living room with the fire on and had the heating running in only the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom.... the rest of the house was effectively "closed off for the winter" Now remember her boiler was decades old and about 12% efficient (according to the plumber who subsequently replaced it later on) and yet she never had an issue with paying for her bills out of her normal pension income along with the winter fuel allowance...

 

Maybe there are other underlying issues here.... as my mum owned her own house, she had no payments to make for housing costs. Maybe the pensioners who are struggling are those who aren't in the position that mum was in and had never owned their house and as a result, still have to find money each month for rent on top of everything else.

 

Discounted heating bills are available for pensioners and as they get older they do not eat as much (or that was the case with my mum) they get free travel and free TV licenses, Free prescriptions etc. and all sorts of discounted things; just for being old. Maybe some allowance or discounted rents my help (which are given to the unemployed in some circumstances)

[Lt Kije]

I believe the State should pay, but we have to find a proper way to fund it, as at the moment it is people in work paying for the retired, and as we are finding out as the baby boomer generation retire their is not enough working people to fund it. But in principle I do agree the State should pay, we just need a fairer way to spread the cost.

[observer]

Well. this is certainly a huge ticking financial time bomb for society to grapple with, and it seems there are no easy answers in terms of "fairness".  If we have a system that places a charge on the assets of the elderly; what do we do with those who have been unfortunate or feckless in not having any assets; and is it "fair" to charge the frugal while giving the feckless a free ride?  On the other hand, if we opt for universal State provision, this would amount to the taxpayer funding the inheritance of the families of those with assets. The message it sends out of course, would be for the elderly to divest themselves of all assets prior to becoming zimmer bound, and spending it on a final fling. I fear the only beneficiaries will be equity release scams, that buy up the assets of the elderly at knock down prices. Thus the cost would ultimately fall on the tax-payer in any case. Then, it raises the question of standards of care and levels of cost;  cheap warehousing or civilised provision?  Add to this the complications caused by increasing ill health (dementia etc) in an increasing elderly demographic, and the costs become astronomical.

[Davy51]

Baz ,i wasn't on about the fuel allowance....i meant the payment that is made when temperatures drop below a certain level for so many days which is available to benefit claimants ,but if you are self funded by  your own pension you are excluded although the weather is just as cold for you as the family next door living on benefit with 10 kids.

 

I think as the chasm between what the government does & doesn't fund is exposed though ,it neither encourages people to work nor save nor plan for their futures. All the much publicised workplace pensions will do is disqualify even more people from old age  extra benefits  ,unless workers can get a good few years contributions under their belts,which will be very unlikely due to the parlous state of the jobs market , to make saving worthwhile.

[observer]

Well the latest reports are that even those "in work" are suffering "poverty"; which makes one wonder how youngsters will afford to save for an adequate pension in any case; and still afford their energy bills etc?

[Lt Kije]

The Young cannot afford to save for their pensions, the whole system needs looking at, for the first time the generation following will be worse off than the generation that preceded them, and non of it is their fault they are paying for the previous generations, the fault lies with all governments over the last 30 years who saw there was a problem but did nothing.

[Dizzy]

The Young cannot afford to save for their pensions, the whole system needs looking at, for the first time the generation following will be worse off than the generation that preceded them, and non of it is their fault they are paying for the previous generations, the fault lies with all governments over the last 30 years who saw there was a problem but did nothing.

 

I agree Lt and with so many people (young and old) now working at such a low wage and under the tax threshold (meaning that they, and the companies who emply them, are not actually paying anything into the NI and PAYE pot anyway) I guess the 'paying for previous generations'  will just get even worse and costly as time goes on.

 

I'd imagine that thinking about pensions comes pretty much way down the line for a lot of people these days. 

[asperity]

I'm a bit confused by that Dizzy. Do you think that poorly paid workers should pay income tax? In reality it's only fairly recently that income tax has been levied on the low paid, and it's only due to successive chancellors failing to raise the tax threshold in line with inflation that has caught so many low paid in the tax net. After all what's the point in taxing people only to reimburse them with benefits apart from creating more civil service jobs (and pension liabilities) to administer it?

[observer]

Problem is, youngsters tend not to think about "pension" provision, especially when it has to come out of a sparse wage; and most schemes tend to be fairly expensive if a living pension is the desired outcome.

[Steve the Original]

Well well well... i dont think anyone should have to sell their assets to pay for health care in any way or form..most of the people have worked and have paid into the NHS for a long time and should be entitled to free Care no matter how much it cost´s..

I actually pay each month a small amount towards that extra care(as Tax) but at the end of the day i will still have to sell up and pay for most of it myself which is a sad thing...

Maybe we can solve the problem by putting old people down who cant afford the extra care anyone remember Logans run on TV, they killed you off at 32(i think it was that age)..
 

[observer]

Perhaps just the sick, lame and lazy Steve?! Your not living near Nuremburg by any chance?!!

[Steve the Original]

No Obs
I live north near the German Dutch Border (Google/maps)  Rheine  a fair bit away from Nürnberg