Bozo wants to hike National Insurance to pay for social care

[Si1]

1 hour ago, nothernsoul said:

Unless any money raised is ring fenced for social care, or tied to an individual, it will just be a common garden tax increase won't it?  The revenue will just flow into government coffers which pays for scores of expensive things, social care just being one of them. And if the method of taxation they choose for an increase is national insurance contribution, it will be a tax increase that hits those working on low or average incomes disproportionately the hardest.

this is the issue - basically in order to protect Tarquin's mega inheritance in Surrey

[onlooker]

1 hour ago, Si1 said:

this is the issue - basically in order to protect Tarquin's mega inheritance in Surrey

I don't follow this.

I would guess the average care home bill prior to death would be about £200,000. (Does anyone have the number?)

To Tarquin's benefactor, £200,000 is really not a lot of money. After care home bills are settled, Tarquin will still walk off with a lot of money.

The person to whom it does make a big difference, is the poor to middle income person whose only asset to bequeath is a modest house on which all mortgages have been cleared. Care home bills will reduce that inheritance to zero.

Yet loads of the posts I have read here and on another site I visit, seem to concentrate on the envy angle, that it is the rich who will be the real beneficiaries.

[kzb]

3 hours ago, Si1 said:

Interesting, I should have realised this but in the hubbub I forgot.

I wonder if the belly aching over it is because most elderly wealth is tied up in housing and so very immobile and ripe for being lost by this mechanism?

The complaint is because someone who has done the right thing, saved and bought a house, ends up in the same position as someone who's p*** ed it up instead.

What is more, many care homes are charging the paying inmates extra to subsidise the state-funded inmates, who they say are not having their full cost paid by the local authority.

So there is a burning sense of injustice for both these things.

[kzb]

3 hours ago, wighty said:

For a sole survivor, if you receive care at home, the value of the house is not taken into consideration. Other assets over £23000 (the threshold) are taken for care after a council assessment to affordability.

However, if you then have to go into a care home, all assets, including the house, must be used to pay the fees down to a threshold). There is no cap to the fees. 

 

Not sure of the fee situation if there is a surviving spouse still living in the house when the partner goes into a care home.. 

It seems we are on the same level of Nirvana in social care funding issues.

[Si1]

3 minutes ago, kzb said:

The complaint is because someone who has done the right thing, saved and bought a house, ends up in the same position as someone who's p*** ed it up instead.

What is more, many care homes are charging the paying inmates extra to subsidise the state-funded inmates, who they say are not having their full cost paid by the local authority.

So there is a burning sense of injustice for both these things.

Housing wealth in this country is only partly down to personal responsibility and much more owing to geographical and generational luck.

Nevertheless the issue of differential care home ripoff costs does seem to highlight that something does need to change.

[kzb]

3 minutes ago, Si1 said:

Housing wealth in this country is only partly down to personal responsibility and much more owing to geographical and generational luck.

Nevertheless the issue of differential care home ripoff costs does seem to highlight that something does need to change.

There wasn't much regional difference in house prices back when these inmates bought.  Someone said on here only 18% of boomers don't own a home.  Although I guess boomers are only just starting to need social care, the oldest is only 76.  We'd have to look up the home ownership rate for 80+ age group.

Another thing, why do some illnesses qualify for NHS-funded nursing care, and dementia often does not?  Dementia is an illness just like other degenerative diseases.  

 

[kzb]

52 minutes ago, onlooker said:

I don't follow this.

I would guess the average care home bill prior to death would be about £200,000. (Does anyone have the number?)

To Tarquin's benefactor, £200,000 is really not a lot of money. After care home bills are settled, Tarquin will still walk off with a lot of money.

The person to whom it does make a big difference, is the poor to middle income person whose only asset to bequeath is a modest house on which all mortgages have been cleared. Care home bills will reduce that inheritance to zero.

Yet loads of the posts I have read here and on another site I visit, seem to concentrate on the envy angle, that it is the rich who will be the real beneficiaries.

I believe, but am not that sure, that most people are not in a care home for long before they die.  I seem to recall the average stay is less than two years.  But best to check it.

[kzb]

3 hours ago, winkie said:

Not completely sure about that.....lots of different anomalies, ways of doing things.

It's true, I've even seen a letter from a county council where they tell someone that is what is going on.

[kzb]

3 hours ago, nothernsoul said:

Unless any money raised is ring fenced for social care, or tied to an individual, it will just be a common garden tax increase won't it?  The revenue will just flow into government coffers which pays for scores of expensive things, social care just being one of them. And if the method of taxation they choose for an increase is national insurance contribution, it will be a tax increase that hits those working on low or average incomes disproportionately the hardest.

Exactly.  Where this NI increase actually ends up will quickly become very murky.

Everyone should bear in mind care homes are commercial enterprises.  They do not have to show the taxpayer where every penny has gone, commercial secrecy you know.

Surely we have learned by now that more funding does not necessarily make things better.

[Dorkins]

1 hour ago, onlooker said:

I don't follow this.

I would guess the average care home bill prior to death would be about £200,000. (Does anyone have the number?)

To Tarquin's benefactor, £200,000 is really not a lot of money. After care home bills are settled, Tarquin will still walk off with a lot of money.

The person to whom it does make a big difference, is the poor to middle income person whose only asset to bequeath is a modest house on which all mortgages have been cleared. Care home bills will reduce that inheritance to zero.

Yet loads of the posts I have read here and on another site I visit, seem to concentrate on the envy angle, that it is the rich who will be the real beneficiaries.

Life expectancy in a care home is about 2 years, usual cost is £800-900pw. So 100 weeks * £850 = £85k.

You'd think the number would be higher given the fuss that is made about it. If you include student loan interest costs it's probably cheaper to put gran in a care home for 2 years than send your kid to university.

Edited September 5, 2021 by Dorkins

[onlooker]

10 minutes ago, Dorkins said:

Life expectancy in a care home is about 2 years, usual cost is £800-900pw. So 100 weeks * £850 = £85k.

You'd think the number would be higher given the fuss that is made about it. If you include student loan interest costs it's probably cheaper to put gran in a care home for 2 years than send your kid to university.

You are probably right but it is a lottery. My father spent 7 years in a care home, but this was a comparatively low cost one for reasons I won't bore you with. His disability was Parkinsons disease, yet the NHS refused to pick up the cost.

It does raise the issue that near me there are some very expensive care homes, which only the rich can afford. I am not sure how much any proposed new scheme will pay out. Perhaps like private education and health, if you don't like the basic offering, you will have to pick up the whole cost yourself. Another disincentive for the rich to support it.

Personally, it would be cheaper and pleasanter to go on a continuous round the World cruise (Covid permitting). The cruise companies could put together a package, full board and lodging, health insurance, and at the end burial at sea.

[Mikhail Liebenstein]

1 hour ago, kzb said:

It seems we are on the same level of Nirvana in social care funding issues.

Sorry, but seeing Nirvana and Social Care in the same sentence made me think of Run by the Foo Fighters:

 

 

[Mikhail Liebenstein]

9 minutes ago, onlooker said:

 

Personally, it would be cheaper and pleasanter to go on a continuous round the World cruise (Covid permitting). The cruise companies could put together a package, full board and lodging, health insurance, and at the end burial at sea.

 

I've been on lots of cruises, and some passengers do seem to use it for that purpose.

[Kosmin]

1 hour ago, onlooker said:

To Tarquin's benefactor, £200,000 is really not a lot of money. After care home bills are settled, Tarquin will still walk off with a lot of money.

I think in the context of discussing which tax should be increased the likely alternatives to increasing NI contributions would be taxes which would reduce Tarquin's inheritance. For example, higher rates of tax on inheritance, capital gains, dividends, rent, or new taxes on property (LVT, mansion tax) or wealth.

Raising NI contributions protects Tarquin's inheritance by removing the need for these taxes.

19 minutes ago, Dorkins said:

Life expectancy in a care home is about 2 years, usual cost is £800-900pw. So 100 weeks * £850 = £85k.

You'd think the number would be higher given the fuss that is made about it.

There's quite high variance of life expectancy and cost though.

My grandmother had to move to a more expensive home due to dementia. She was old and frail at that point. But I noticed that a lot of the other residents were a lot younger than the typical resident at the previous home. There seemed physically very healthy, but not mentally. So I wonder if they would live a lot longer, which would be doubly expensive.

[kzb]

9 minutes ago, Mikhail Liebenstein said:

Sorry, but seeing Nirvana and Social Care in the same sentence made me think of Run by the Foo Fighters:

I was using it in the sense of the stages of ultimate enlightenment.

[Ignorantbliss]

1 hour ago, kzb said:

The complaint is because someone who has done the right thing, saved and bought a house, ends up in the same position as someone who's p*** ed it up instead.

What is more, many care homes are charging the paying inmates extra to subsidise the state-funded inmates, who they say are not having their full cost paid by the local authority.

So there is a burning sense of injustice for both these things.

Indeed.  Was the guardian for my aunt (North Scotland area) and it was a real eye-opener dealing with the care home - god help you if you have to go into one of them.  Better to enjoy high living now and die of a heart attack than rot away in there with Alzheimer's. 

Over the 4 years she was in the home the monthly fee went from £3500 per month to £4700 per month at the end (2018), all self-funded through sale of her house. 

Every year she undoubtedly subsidised the council funded residents who paid the home £2800 per month at the end (vs the £4700 my aunt was paying).  And that was for the same size room.  When you challenged the home owners about the fee differential (all solicitors with new BMW X5's every year....) they would just say that the fee difference was down to "market conditions".

Each year the care got worse, with the good staff leaving the industry completely to go back to the NHS, as the working conditions and pay were better there going by the ones I spoke to.

The best care used to come from non-profit carers like the Church of Scotland, but they are pulling out due to the costs involved to leave just profiteers that care nought of the patient.  To them, the people under their care are just commodities to be milked for as much money as possible, whilst providing just the legal minimum level of care required to stop closure by the care inspectorate. 

That is what worries me about all this new funding, the industry at the moment is too lightly regulated as the care inspections are so infrequent, and there is such a severe lack of capacity that there is no real competition to force standards up.  Not a lover of government interventions but I would favour NHS non-profit homes being set up, as the free market as I've experienced it is morally bankrupt.

[Insane]

43 minutes ago, Ignorantbliss said:

That is what worries me about all this new funding, the industry at the moment is too lightly regulated as the care inspections are so infrequent, and there is such a severe lack of capacity that there is no real competition to force standards up.  Not a lover of government interventions but I would favour NHS non-profit homes being set up, as the free market as I've experienced it is morally bankrupt.

I grew up with a friend who's Mother was the Live in Manager of a Council Run old folks home. It was well run and money did not seem to be a problem , that was back in the 70's. All gone now a modern building that was knocked down and redeveloped so the clientele today will be at the mercy of the private sector.  

[kzb]

2 hours ago, Ignorantbliss said:

When you challenged the home owners about the fee differential (all solicitors with new BMW X5's every year....) they would just say that the fee difference was down to "market conditions".

This is what I was saying.  First of all there is no transparency about how the money is used.  Secondly it's obviously a business investment upon which the investors expect a healthy return.  I've never heard of lawyers owning care homes before, but I have heard of GPs and NHS Consultants doing so.  Simply throwing money at these businesses will likely produce little improvement, except of course for the owners and jobs agencies.

 

2 hours ago, Ignorantbliss said:

That is what worries me about all this new funding, the industry at the moment is too lightly regulated as the care inspections are so infrequent, and there is such a severe lack of capacity that there is no real competition to force standards up.  Not a lover of government interventions but I would favour NHS non-profit homes being set up, as the free market as I've experienced it is morally bankrupt.

If you don't look you don't find, and maybe you don't look because you don't want to find !

Recently a lot of care homes closed due to "customers" being scared off by Covid.  Many closed with little notice, with the existing inmates turfed out to their families etc.  So I think just now they are in trouble, but when demand returns they will be able to charge more yet again because they will be in shortage.

[dpg50000]

9 hours ago, Dorkins said:

Life expectancy in a care home is about 2 years, usual cost is £800-900pw. So 100 weeks * £850 = £85k.

You'd think the number would be higher given the fuss that is made about it. If you include student loan interest costs it's probably cheaper to put gran in a care home for 2 years than send your kid to university.

A new care home opened up in my town about 4 years ago. Even back then, for dementia patients (who are obviously fairly challenging to look after) it was £1200 a week.

£62.4K a year, for something whose safety was rated inadequate in their last inspection (Dec 2020)!! http://lmhealthcare.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/990826e5-7f06-4ceb-bff5-0daf33922a98.pdf

Edit to add - I was shocked just how big a business care homes obviously are. Looking on Google Maps, then are 19 in a few miles radius from me.

Edited September 6, 2021 by dpg50000

[winkie]

11 hours ago, kzb said:

It's true, I've even seen a letter from a county council where they tell someone that is what is going on.

Why would you.... In recent news that some decision makers in authority now use a personal phone?

[GregBowman]

On 04/09/2021 at 05:27, skinnylattej said:

What planet are you living on?

In England, local councils are almost as corrupt as central government.

Planet UK. For the man or business in the street we generally play it straight. I am talking about daily interaction with the police, the law, local authorities. I get councils are are like national gov. But having sold in Qatar, India and Italy believe me we play it straight.

[NuBrit]

 

[hurlerontheditch]

 

[winkie]

1 hour ago, GregBowman said:

Planet UK. For the man or business in the street we generally play it straight. I am talking about daily interaction with the police, the law, local authorities. I get councils are are like national gov. But having sold in Qatar, India and Italy believe me we play it straight.

Down to the people that it does not go the wrong way.....seen what low regulation has done to the building trade, with inflammable residential homes .

Some could say they have been busy making money all their lives out of others, when there might come a time when others will make plenty out of us.

[GregBowman]

5 minutes ago, winkie said:

Down to the people that it does not go the wrong way.....seen what low regulation has done to the building trade, with inflammable residential homes .

Some could say they have been busy making money all their lives out of others, when there might come a time when others will make plenty out of us.

Agree re the light touch regulation bit - Boeing 737 max is another example.