Middle-class pensioners to lose benefits under Tory plan to fund social care

[Mrs Bear]

2 hours ago, kzb said:

Well hush say it quietly, but dementia is a diagnosable disease.  Just like cancer.  And it's treatment should be paid for by the NHS budget. 

Well, the drugs to treat the symptoms of dementia and its side effects (hallucinations, paranoia, anxiety) etc., ARE  provided and paid for by the NHS. 

The trouble is, the care someone with dementia needs is not mostly anything that needs to be provided by doctors, nurses, hospitals.  They need supervision, someone to manage their money, someone to provide meals and drinks - and remind them to eat and drink them - someone to try to ensure that they keep clean (often difficult), someone to help them dress appropriately, someone to help when they've been fiddling with the heating/TV, you name it, and are then telling you for the nth time that it's not working, someone to remember that they have a hospital appt. and take them to it, someone to make sure they take any medication properly, because if not they won't remember to do it, someone to try to distract them when they're insisting for for the 27th time that they need to go home to parents who've been dead for decades. 

I could go on for another half page. 

And they might need all this on a daily basis for years. 

 

 

[pig]

If LVT is a good idea, lets just do LVT.

If the NHS is a good idea, lets just keep the NHS.

[BorrowToLeech]

Paying for something with 'the value' of your home is just passing on the cost to the next generation.

It is just can kicking. It isn't tackling the aging crisis, funding your own retirement, self reliance, or any of that nonsense. 

The next generation, who will be paying for your care, are taxpayers.

It makes no difference whether they fund your care through an inflated price for their home, or an inflated income tax.

The debate on this has shown once again that Landlording, and sponging off the work of others, is the core central belief of the British. 

Edited May 22, 2017 by DrBuyToLeech

[winkie]

Like Mrs Bear said dementia or as it used to be called going senile has little to do with the medical profession, not a lot a doctor or nurse can do, it is something that can last months or for many years and requires constant care with dignity, a demanding and skilled job only certain trained people can do.... although some family members might be able to do some of the caring, others could not.

Paying for it should be by the generation that require the service if they have the funds/equity to do so.... why should the tax payers of the next generation and the generation following them pay for it, they have enough to pay for.....higher housing costs, education costs and health costs.....they might have to pay for their own care for themselves one day.

[Si1]

9 hours ago, DrBuyToLeech said:

Paying for something with 'the value' of your home is just passing on the cost to the next generation.

It is just can kicking. It isn't tackling the aging crisis, funding your own retirement, self reliance, or any of that nonsense. 

The next generation, who will be paying for your care, are taxpayers.

It makes no difference whether they fund your care through an inflated price for their home, or an inflated income tax.

The debate on this has shown once again that Landlording, and sponging off the work of others, is the core central belief of the British. 

Wrong, it's not socialising the cost, that's the point.

[Si1]

9 hours ago, pig said:

If LVT is a good idea, lets just do LVT.

If the NHS is a good idea, lets just keep the NHS.

They are keeping the NHS

[BorrowToLeech]

55 minutes ago, Si1 said:

Wrong, it's not socialising the cost, that's the point.

I didn't say it was, or that it wasn't.  I'm not on any side of the debate, and I'm not for or against the policy.

The policy implicitly assumes that housing is magical.  On that basis, it may or may not be a fair and just policy, I don't know.  

I'm sure you can have a good old debate about it.  Why didn't Gandalf give the ring to Aslan?  Is Santa's wife being held hostage in Area 51?  How do we pay for the elderly in a world of magic houses?

Houses aren't magical.  We can't even discuss a social problem rationally, because our economy, even our minds, have been warped by the belief that homes are devices for extracting other people's money without limit or consequence.

Houses cannot pay for anything.  The reality is that both elderly care, and future inheritances for the special flowers, will be funded by selling our children to Chinese landlords.

 

 

Edited May 23, 2017 by DrBuyToLeech

[Loving The Crash]

11 minutes ago, DrBuyToLeech said:

Houses cannot pay for anything.

..but a house can be sold to pay for anything.

[BorrowToLeech]

20 minutes ago, Loving The Crash said:

..but a house can be sold to pay for anything.

Yes, and that is the problem.

Government policy turns houses into treasure. This distorts the economy, and makes efficient allocation of resources impossible.  

This entire debate is just one example of that. 

[Mrs Bear]

14 hours ago, thisisthisitmaybe said:

I think it has a strong hereditary basis.

 

I hope not!  My mother was one of five, and all but the youngest - she is several years younger than the others - have had it.  But they were nearly all at least 80 before the first signs.  

I have certainly heard of early onset dementia having a hereditary factor - it's particularly awful when somebody relatively young gets it.  

Years ago there was a theory that aluminium could be a cause.  Give that my granny, the mother of those five, had a kitchen full of aluminium saucepans, and they had a large garden with masses of (acid) fruit that was so often simmering away in those saucepans, I am hanging on to this theory, although it's been discredited now.  But then these experts change their minds so often - what was once gospel is rubbished.  Look at eggs, butter, and now diesel, FFS - never mind how to put babies to sleep.  When I had mine we were told sternly to put them to sleep on their tummies - it was much safer.  Roll on ten years and mothers were told equally sternly NOT to - it contributes to cot death. 

[kzb]

11 hours ago, DrBuyToLeech said:

Paying for something with 'the value' of your home is just passing on the cost to the next generation.

It is just can kicking. It isn't tackling the aging crisis, funding your own retirement, self reliance, or any of that nonsense. 

The next generation, who will be paying for your care, are taxpayers.

It makes no difference whether they fund your care through an inflated price for their home, or an inflated income tax.

The debate on this has shown once again that Landlording, and sponging off the work of others, is the core central belief of the British. 

So what do you suggest then? 

Property values are mostly not due to work per se.  They are a result of Government policy, a source of massive inequality going forward and about the last thing alive left to tax.

[crashmonitor]

30 minutes ago, Mrs Bear said:

I hope not!  My mother was one of five, and all but the youngest - she is several years younger than the others - have had it.  But they were nearly all at least 80 before the first signs.  

I have certainly heard of early onset dementia having a hereditary factor - it's particularly awful when somebody relatively young gets it.  

Years ago there was a theory that aluminium could be a cause.  Give that my granny, the mother of those five, had a kitchen full of aluminium saucepans, and they had a large garden with masses of (acid) fruit that was so often simmering away in those saucepans, I am hanging on to this theory, although it's been discredited now.  But then these experts change their minds so often - what was once gospel is rubbished.  Look at eggs, butter, and now diesel, FFS - never mind how to put babies to sleep.  When I had mine we were told sternly to put them to sleep on their tummies - it was much safer.  Roll on ten years and mothers were told equally sternly NOT to - it contributes to cot death. 

I know you have said before your mother led a healthy lifestyle but there are now links to lifestyle and there will be always the exception to prove the rule. Basically clogged arteries to the brain seems to be the main cause with brain degeneration. We now have sufferers trying to keep the disease at bay with increased exercise such as the daily fell walker featured recently on the BBC. by increasing blood flow to the brain  he is managing the disease.

My mother in law died of it last year and she basically never walked anywhere and was overweight in middle age so there were some causal links. The disease  is actually not increasing in numbers, in spite of an ageing population, probably because lifestyles are now more healthy.

Edited May 23, 2017 by crashmonitor

[Mrs Bear]

8 hours ago, crashmonitor said:

I know you have said before your mother led a healthy lifestyle but there are now links to lifestyle and there will be always the exception to prove the rule. Basically clogged arteries to the brain seems to be the main cause with brain degeneration. We now have sufferers trying to keep the disease at bay with increased exercise such as the daily fell walker featured recently on the BBC. by increasing blood flow to the brain  he is managing the disease.

My mother in law died of it last year and she basically never walked anywhere and was overweight in middle age so there were some causal links. The disease  is actually not increasing in numbers, in spite of an ageing population, probably because lifestyles are now more healthy.

Actually, my mother didn't have a very healthy lifestyle, certainly not after my father died.  She wasn't overweight and didn't eat junk, but  she became almost agoraphobic and hardly ever walked anywhere.  She could still well manage stairs before she went into the care home at 89, though - stairs were about the only exercise she ever got. 

My FiL, OTOH, was still playing tennis and cycling at 80, and walked a lot. He was never remotely overweight, but he still got what was probably vascular dementia, though the tests they have now weren't available then. 

I'm sure a healthy lifestyle must cut down the odds, though. 

[The Knimbies who say No]

11 hours ago, Si1 said:

Wrong, it's not socialising the cost, that's the point.

I disagree, (maybe 'socially stratifying the cost' is more apt) as it is very biased against younger people, which is the whole point.

 

It's completely unsustainable in any case, which is a less idealistic reason to think it's a crap idea too.

[BorrowToLeech]

11 hours ago, kzb said:

So what do you suggest then? 

Property values are mostly not due to work per se.  They are a result of Government policy, a source of massive inequality going forward and about the last thing alive left to tax.

When you sell a house, to fund your retirement, the money you collect to pay for nurses and such is real wealth.  It must really be earned, over a lifetime, by the buyer or their tenants.  

They are paying your 100k care costs - future homeowners and tenants.

Housing wealth is a claim on future incomes.  It isn't earned by the homeowner at all, not in any sense, it is a tax extracted from the next occupant. 

My suggestion?  Fix the ******ing economy.  Take the wealth out of houses, and put it back into the productive assets. 

Instead of 400k houses, how about 40k houses and 360k to spend on building a business, getting an education and raising your kids? Or, if you prefer, spent on hospitals, schools, and cruise missiles.

Miraculously you'd find that care was no longer unaffordable because we wouldn't be wasting our money supporting idle landlords, lazy baby boomers, Londoners and the lower echelons of the Chinese communist party.  

We need a million nurses, we've got a million landlords, it seems to me that the solution is pretty obvious.

[Dorkins]

11 minutes ago, DrBuyToLeech said:

We need a million nurses, we've got a million landlords, it seems to me that the solution is pretty obvious.

*horrific mental image of Fergus in a nurse outfit*

[pig]

On 23/05/2017 at 8:07 AM, Si1 said:

They are keeping the NHS

I'm not sure that's the plan.

To expand a little, we have the problem of bubbly housing 'wealth' apparently inspiring a cack-handed redistribution of housing 'wealth' from people suffering from dementia.

If you suffer from cancer on the other hand your family gets to inherit the house.

It seems a lot more civilised that we simply share the cost of caring for all our sick and elderly but if we are serious about housing inequality and think property tax is the way to go then tax it across the board - not just people suffering from dementia.

[iamnumerate]

2 minutes ago, pig said:

I'm not sure that's the plan.

To expand a little, we have the problem of bubbly housing 'wealth' apparently inspiring a cack-handed redistribution of housing 'wealth' from people suffering from dementia.

If you suffer from cancer on the other hand your family gets to inherit the house.

It seems a lot more civilised that we simply share the cost of caring for all our sick and elderly but if we are serious about housing inequality and think property tax is the way to go then tax it across the board - not just people suffering from dementia.

+1  Why can we read sensible commentary like this in the press.

[kzb]

13 hours ago, DrBuyToLeech said:

When you sell a house, to fund your retirement, the money you collect to pay for nurses and such is real wealth.  It must really be earned, over a lifetime, by the buyer or their tenants.  

They are paying your 100k care costs - future homeowners and tenants.

Housing wealth is a claim on future incomes.  It isn't earned by the homeowner at all, not in any sense, it is a tax extracted from the next occupant. 

My suggestion?  Fix the ******ing economy.  Take the wealth out of houses, and put it back into the productive assets. 

Instead of 400k houses, how about 40k houses and 360k to spend on building a business, getting an education and raising your kids? Or, if you prefer, spent on hospitals, schools, and cruise missiles.

Miraculously you'd find that care was no longer unaffordable because we wouldn't be wasting our money supporting idle landlords, lazy baby boomers, Londoners and the lower echelons of the Chinese communist party.  

We need a million nurses, we've got a million landlords, it seems to me that the solution is pretty obvious.

Well yes on a deep level you are correct.  Going forward this should be where we want to end up.

What we want however is a solution that fixes things given our present situation.

That present situation is that we have a large hole in the social care budget and a lot of unearned equity in houses.

That equity is a lottery.  Persons bought into the London property bubble decades ago have become millionaires simply by being where they are.  It was never earned, it was made up as quantitative easing.  Some of this money should be clawed back for the social care budget.

[kzb]

1 hour ago, pig said:

I'm not sure that's the plan.

To expand a little, we have the problem of bubbly housing 'wealth' apparently inspiring a cack-handed redistribution of housing 'wealth' from people suffering from dementia.

If you suffer from cancer on the other hand your family gets to inherit the house.

It seems a lot more civilised that we simply share the cost of caring for all our sick and elderly but if we are serious about housing inequality and think property tax is the way to go then tax it across the board - not just people suffering from dementia.

+2

It should be a graduated estate tax across the board.  Not capped, but taxed as a percentage, with a personal allowance to cover legal fees and funeral costs.

If it was universal like this, the starting tax band could probably be quite low, maybe 10%, but increasing to say 30% over half a million.  Something like that.

[BorrowToLeech]

51 minutes ago, kzb said:

Well yes on a deep level you are correct.  Going forward this should be where we want to end up.

What we want however is a solution that fixes things given our present situation.

That present situation is that we have a large hole in the social care budget and a lot of unearned equity in houses.

That equity is a lottery.  Persons bought into the London property bubble decades ago have become millionaires simply by being where they are.  It was never earned, it was made up as quantitative easing.  Some of this money should be clawed back for the social care budget.

I wouldn't object to that, but it's a short-termist approach.

Long-term, we probably shouldn't  rely on a permanent housing crisis in order to look after our retirement. 

[kzb]

1 minute ago, DrBuyToLeech said:

I wouldn't object to that, but it's a short-termist approach.

Long-term, we probably shouldn't  rely on a permanent housing crisis in order to look after our retirement. 

Agreed, but there is little sign of the fundamental shift in the nature of our economy that is required. 

[Nabby81]

16 hours ago, DrBuyToLeech said:

When you sell a house, to fund your retirement, the money you collect to pay for nurses and such is real wealth.  It must really be earned, over a lifetime, by the buyer or their tenants.  

They are paying your 100k care costs - future homeowners and tenants.

Housing wealth is a claim on future incomes.  It isn't earned by the homeowner at all, not in any sense, it is a tax extracted from the next occupant. 

My suggestion?  Fix the ******ing economy.  Take the wealth out of houses, and put it back into the productive assets. 

Instead of 400k houses, how about 40k houses and 360k to spend on building a business, getting an education and raising your kids? Or, if you prefer, spent on hospitals, schools, and cruise missiles.

Miraculously you'd find that care was no longer unaffordable because we wouldn't be wasting our money supporting idle landlords, lazy baby boomers, Londoners and the lower echelons of the Chinese communist party.  

We need a million nurses, we've got a million landlords, it seems to me that the solution is pretty obvious.

The idea that people who MIGHT get demetria and MIGHT have to use some of their house wealth to cover it is enough to get a policy ridiculed and changed .How would any government pass a policy that would guarantee people lost their housing wealth ?

 

[kzb]

10 minutes ago, Nabby81 said:

The idea that people who MIGHT get demetria and MIGHT have to use some of their house wealth to cover it is enough to get a policy ridiculed and changed .How would any government pass a policy that would guarantee people lost their housing wealth ?

 

This is the same party that gave us the Poll Tax and the Child Support Agency !

[Nabby81]

6 minutes ago, kzb said:

This is the same party that gave us the Poll Tax and the Child Support Agency !

Fair point , in power something they could do ...as an election campaign though it would be toxic .