Our pensioners have paid for their social care. Why does Theresa May want to make them pay twice?
This tapestry praises the NHS as a “cradle to grave” service.
A comment arrived at Vox Political today, presumably from a Tory, berating those of us who have attacked the Conservative manifesto by trying to “find the worst” in it.
One of the points this person made was about the Dementia Tax – the plan to use the value of a senior citizen’s house to pay for their social care.
“With the new Tory proposal your family will be left with maximum of £100,000,” this person wrote.
My immediate response was that £100,000 is not enough for those who would have inherited the house to buy another.
But then I thought: Wait a minute! There’s something very wrong here.
These are people who have spent their entire working lives paying National Insurance and taxes on the understanding that the health care they would receive – including social care – would run “from the cradle to the grave”.
Governments – Tory, obviously – may have tried to renege on that, but the principle is that everybody has paid towards – and has reason to expect – a standard of service until the day they die.
By suggesting that a person’s house should be used to support their social care – something they have bought while also paying for the health and social care provided by the state – Theresa May and her cronies are asking them to pay for the same thing, twice.
And, you know what?
For a party that babbles on about fairness so much – THAT DOESN’T SEEM VERY FAIR TO ME!
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What happens to elderly tenants? No house to fall back on no care? Will tax arrangements similar to that which allows Lord Grosvenor and his ilk to cling onto family homes rather than pay the death duties upon them be made available to poorer families who also wish to safe guard their inheritance?
The Conservatives will attempt to soften the blow by promising that pensioners will not have to sell their homes to pay for their care costs while they or a surviving partner are alive. Instead, ‘products will be available’ allowing the elderly to pay by extracting equity from their homes, which will be recovered at a later date when they die or sell their residence.
I have just seen this post online:
‘People need to read the small print associated with this because its a lot nastier than it looks.
I work in the City. The insurance industry was approached by the Government several months ago with the aim of creating a new market for a new product.
This arrangement is a culmination of those discussions. You wont have to sell your house PROVIDED that you purchase an insurance product to cover your social care. The “premiums” would be recovered from the equity after the house has been sold and the Insurance company will have a lien on the house and can force a sale if it wants to. So your offspring cant keep it on the market for long in order to get the best price.
The real kicker in this is that in order to encourage the industry to market these products the government guaranteed that there would be no cap on the premiums.
This was in some ways “atonement” for Osborne’s destruction of the highly lucrative annuities market. This means that the premiums could be up to (and including) the entire remaining equity in the property after the government has taken its cut. Companies will be falling over themselves to get their snouts in this trough.
In short your offspring and relatives could get absolutely nothing from your estate.
If you buy one of these products you need to read the small print very very carefully indeed because there will be some real dogs on the market.
I suspect that this is another financial scandal waiting to happen, but by the time it does May will be long gone.”
That’s me buggered then a house and dementia to boot robbed all my life only to get mugged leaving this world
my wife mike works in end of life care and the costs at her care home range from 700 to one thousand pounds a week
the average life span ranges around 2 years although in her unit 5 years is max
they have another unit which caters for more abled bodied and you can be there for 10 years plus if unlucky
may doesn’t understand that those that are long term ill try their best to keep quite and in most cases wouldn’t dream of asking the government for extra money like the cold weather payments
this group will suffer the most as they were brought up to keep quite on personal financial issues
this group of less well off pensioners are at rick of death as we have seen all to often in the past
a conservative government will be the final nail in the coffin for many both young and old
Only one point I would take issue with in this article. You state “Theresa May and her cronies are “asking”, see my point?
A true story about how cruel and lacking in compassion the Tory party was during Thatcher’s reign when I was nursing and nothing has changed since.
A Psycho Geriatric patient in Essex suffering from Dementia had no heirs but a house worth £80,000 (£500k+ today) was visited regularly by a Government official plying him with sweets etc.
He was trying to force Harry to sign over his house to the Government, too impatient to wait for him to die.
Harry ate the sweets, pushed the documents away and started singing “I’m forever blowing bubbles” – Good old Harry !
They got his house 2 years later when Harry died.
In addition, we are all paying extra Council Tax for Social Care.
So how many times do we have to pay for our care?
I wonder if David Cameron, now head honcho of the Dementia/Alzheimer’s research UK will be selling his own house for his care…….
I cannot think of a nicer and more compassionate person to head such a heart-breaking human condition such as dementia. Ugh!!!
Its a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Why don’t we remind those Tories what Thatcher promised when she announced her great vision of a property owning democracy, that was they invest in a house that would be there for their children, when the time came to pass it on.
But then Tories will always promise you the earth, and end up taking it away from you, they just can’t help themselves.
One would think the Tories had more sense then to saw away the branch they are sitting on. May won’t get her landslide if she attacks her own voters.
What about tenants in common? Shared ownership ( half mortgage, half housing association rent) ? People with no equity in home? People who rent? It’s not been thought through at all. Just another way for Tories to rob you blind.
I somebody doesn’t grasp the nettle younger people will have to pay much, much more to fund social care for the elderly, or the country will have to borrow to fund social care, or the elderly will have to put up with inadequate social care because more of us are living longer into extreme old age. Putting up the top rate of tax and raising corporation tax etc., simply won’t bring in enough money to fund comprehensive social care for all who need it and all the other things Labour is promising.
To be honest I’m more concerned about the lack of affordable social housing than the inheritance of wealth “cascading down the generations” by means of property. It’s the poor not being able to get secure tenancies of decent accommodation to rent at an affordable level that bugs me, not owner-occupiers having to have their homes sold AFTER THEIR DEATHS to pay for care received during their lifetime. This doesn’t seem any different in principle than inheritance tax, which Labour used to be full-steam-ahead about.
The tories seem to want young folk to ‘blame’ the pensioners for the fact that houses are now unaffordable for so many, It’s not the pensioners’ fault, but the greedy bankers and the rich elite who messed up our country. Mother mayhem’s own husband works to help the rich avoid tax…what a hypocrite this vile woman is