The government has launched a public consultation on ways to fund personal care for elderly people. The move comes amid growing concern that means-testing designed to direct help to the most needy is instead being used to deny help to many vulnerable people.
In a report for health thinktank King's Fund two years ago, Derek Wanless suggested a partnership model with funding from the state and individuals, benefits meeting the share of poorer people. The government says it is considering a compulsory social insurance scheme. It is keen to keep a means-tested element in care provision, saying the free personal care offered in Scotland - and increasingly costly there - is unaffordable in England. But the prime minister is also unhappy that people with large savings now have to sell their homes to fund non-medical care. Gordon Brown said:
We can and must look to give people the opportunity and the support to save for their old age in a way which insures them and protects their houses and their inheritance.
The government's call for a public debate has brought a rapid response on the web. Blogger Postman Pat kicks off with a radical suggestion - turning pensions into a "later life welfare fund" to pay for care and retirement income. He wrote:
People could contribute to it throughout their working lives tax free, and the funds could be used to purchase insurance for elderly care, provide pension income, pay for adjustments to you home, etc. The government could even contribute to the fund throughout a person's life as part of a complete overhaul of welfare.
But for Mike Cox the only answer is to take private companies out of the care field. He wrote:
As a social worker at the time, directly involved in the provision of social care, I would submit that the rot started when Thatcher began to privatise social care in the 1980s. Before then we should all remember social care was a right - services, including residential services, directly provided by each local authority... by no means perfect but it certainly did not involve private companies scrabbling for profit out of people's care needs.
However another social worker, who blogs at Fighting Monsters, believes free personal care is "a thing of the past", adding:
Wanless recommended a free minimum level of care for all and the argument has a lot of merit. It could be topped up of course, but there should always be a means tested element because some people do have more money than others and it would allow the possibility of a better quality of care to be spread more widely.
Letter writers have been quick to respond, too. On the Guardian's letters page today Malcolm Naylor from Otley, West Yorkshire, said he feared the consulation was a prelude to "more cuts, more means testing and more taxation". Instead he suggests a new care service:
A National Care Service should be set up, funded by the Treasury, to run in parallel with the NHS. By taking this service out of the hands of local authorities, everyone will be entitled to the same care. It shouldn't be a postcode lottery as it is now.
But with cost the major problem, letter-writer MJ Erskine Wallis of Oxford has a simpler answer:
Alan Johnson's estimate for social care budget: £24bn in 2026. Tax not paid to the exchequer in Britain due to tax avoidance: £25bn per year. Sorted then?
