Home sweet nursing home

As life expectancy increases, so does the likelihood you'll eventually need nursing care, either at your home or in a nursing home. But who'll pay? .

I was fascinated to learn that the three principal political parties (with apologies to the nationalists) had even contemplated getting together to discuss the obvious problem: a lot of us live longer, but with physical and mental capacities so diminished that we require help at home, which is expensive to provide, or residential care, which is even more expensive, or full time nursing care, which is prohibitively expensive.

The solutions are means tested, which means, as ever, that there problems associated with drawing the lines that determine who gets what. Different rules apply in Scotland, funded in part by the generosity of English, Welsh and Northern Irish taxpayers, and within England there are different interpretations of the rules from one local authority to another. This is a mess.

The mess is compounded by the fact that our politicians believe that old folks resent the fact that the value of their home, which their close relatives have already defined as an expectation of inheritance, may be lost to the care providers. And so begins the febrile search for some way to raise the money.

Private insurance doesn’t seem to have worked, probably because the chances of going into a home and making a claim are so high that the price of the policy is perceived to be ruinous. The same sort of problem arises with private health insurance as you get older. In my case, when I calculated that two years worth of premiums were equal one new knee, I decided to assume the risk myself. That was some time ago, so by now I've saved enough for a hip as well.

The Tories say Gordon plans a death tax. Alastair says Gordon plans no such thing. How much do they need to raise? Six billion quid per annum according to some estimates. All sorts of daft ideas will be floated as our politicians try to avoid confronting reality, or to be precise, two realities.

The first is that the cost of looking after those who cannot look after themselves will have to be met from general taxation. Those people, as now, will have their pension diverted to the care provider, leaving them with the indignity of pocket money. Those people, as now, may not be able to choose when they go into care, or where they go.

The second reality is that taxes can’t go very much higher without throttling the economy. Thus, if spending on the care of the elderly is to increase, spending on something else will have to be cut.

In the circumstances, the chances of me, you, or anyone else being allowed to ring fence our assets as we are carried into the care home and the bosom of the taxpayer are precisely, ineluctably, nil.

Read this article at http://www.candidmoney.com/articles/article64.aspx