Labour says nearly 22,000 elderly and vulnerable people will have run out of money before Boris Johnson ’s care cap comes into force.
And Age UK revealed that 15 a day are already using up the last of their cash paying for social care..
The PM is to introduce an £86,000 lifetime limit on care costs - but not until October 2023.
Both Labour and rebel Tory MPs oppose the plan because those with a house and savings worth as little as £100,000 stand to lose 80% of everything.
Only the better-off will be able to afford to keep their higher-value homes under the scheme.
Elaine Yates, 72, has already spent £45,000 on extra care for husband Michael, 76, debilitated by a stroke 18 years ago and now suffering from diabetes, cancer and dementia.
The additional professional help enables her to look after him in their one-bed bungalow in Irchester, Northants rather than putting him in a home.
But under the new rules that money will not be taken into account when the cap is introduced.
Elaine said: “We will never be in a position to support ourselves and we will eventually lose our home.
“A system in which wealthy people get off lightly while those like us always have to pay is just cruel.
“Michael could have gone into care. But he’s my husband and I chose to give up my career as a footwear manager to look after him full time.”
The couple now live off state and military pensions from Michael’s 12 years in the Army.
Labour analysis of social care applications to local authorities shows 10,450 adults will run out of cash within the next two years.
And another 11,500 have already done so in the two years it took Mr Johnson from promising to fix the social care crisis for good to coming up with proposals.
But Shadow Social Care minster Liz Kendall said: “He doesn’t have a plan to deliver this, let alone actually reform social care.
“It won’t stop people from being forced to sell their homes and does nothing to help those who need care right now. It is unfair and wrong.”
Caroline Abrahams of Age UK added: “Those people with the fewest assets, typically living in the Midlands and the North, will be especially disadvantaged.
“Those whose homes are worth a lot of money, generally in London and the South East, are the only ones who will gain.”
The Tories tore up the previous blueprint of how the cap should work drawn up by economist Sir Andrew Dilnot in 2011.
His recommendation that payments from local authorities would be used to reach the cap was accepted by the Coalition government in 2014 but ditched by David Cameron when he won outright power a year later.
Sir Andrew said he was “very disappointed” that the poorest pensioners would have to pay more out of their own pockets.
Under the new system someone with starting assets of £100,000 would be left with £20,000 while someone with £270,000 would hold on to £184,000.
A new Health and Social Care tax is to be introduced next year will cost a £20,000 earner an extra £130 - and unlike National Insurance even working pensioners will have to pay it.
