Extend the uncertainty?

Arklight

The-Joker wrote: »

Cash strapped governments need to make savings and this is one of the first areas.

As useual they will need to take equity from properties in the future as things look more bleak to pay for an aging population

The government has cash strapped itself. Like everything else that has been privatised it has started by slashing funding in state provision until that provision fails, then using that as a justification for a privatisation that no one originally would have agreed to.

Americans spend twice as much on healthcare as we do and arguably receive less care. Headline stats like cancer survival rates being better obfuscate the fact that over a third lost their life savings and they are twice as likely to go bankrupt.

Privatisation is not an inevitable end state of people needing care, it is an ideological decision.

https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/how-much-does-cancer-cost?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1

sevenhills

Arklight wrote: »

The government has cash strapped itself. Americans spend twice as much on healthcare as we do and arguably receive less care.

Is it the Governments job to pay for our care in old age, suggesting that its 'healthcare' would mean that it should.
This is when it comes back to pressure from the families, should the care for old people with illnesses such as Alzheimers paid for by the NHS?

Malthusian

LHW99 wrote: »

I agree, although it is a pity there is not some way of insurers offering a suitable product for those who would prefer to pay a bit throughout a period of time, rather than worry even when they do self-pay that the funds will run out, and they will be moved somewhere they don't want with no advocate to stand up for them

Nobody wants to compromise their lifestyle while they are compos mentis to pay for a service they won't be conscious enough to appreciate. The cost of such insurance would be huge. Far more than life insurance, far more than comprehensive income protection, and most people don't even want to pay for that even though they need it far more than they need care insurance.

There would be a big problem with the risk pool. People like myself with virtually zero dementia in their family history would not take out care insurance at any price. This would push up the price of insurance even higher for those who wanted it, because there would be very few non-claimers to subsidise the claimers. Contrast that with home insurance, where nobody self-insures on the grounds that there isn't a family history of their house burning down. Similarly income protection doesn't have a problem with low-risk people self-selecting out of the pool, because even very fit and healthy people know they could get hit by a bus or contract cancer.

In addition you don't need insurance if you have plenty of equity in your house to fund your eventual care. Which can be used to buy a care annuity if appropriate to almost eliminate the risk of running out.

If you are young and have a large amount of disposable income that could be used to pay for a care insurance policy, you should be saving for a deposit to get on the housing ladder. If you are older and on the housing ladder you are probably sorted. If you are older and not on the housing ladder you are uninsurable.

lisyloo

In addition you don't need insurance if you have plenty of equity in your house to fund your eventual care. Which can be used to buy a care annuity if appropriate to almost eliminate the risk of running out.

As I’ve already said you can’t liquidate a property whilst the remainder stays living in it, so when first person enters the care home this either means downsizing (not always practical or desireable) or expensive equity release.
You strategy above overlooks the fact that often 2 people share one home and one of them might want to carry on living there.

To be honest it’s so difficult to fund a decent pension that I haven’t really addressed this issue for myself and would consider myself very organised relative to the average person (have a will, EPA)

lisyloo

sevenhills wrote: »

Is it the Governments job to pay for our care in old age, suggesting that its 'healthcare' would mean that it should.
This is when it comes back to pressure from the families, should the care for old people with illnesses such as Alzheimers paid for by the NHS?

One option is for everyone to pay more tax yes.
One downside of this is that you might lose a huge number of (almost) free family carers I.e. those people who manage their parents at home.

I struggle with dressing or bathing someone as healthcare.
Otherwise it should be free for babies and children.
Just suggesting there could be a technical/legal minefield there.

Malthusian

lisyloo wrote: »

As I’ve already said you can’t liquidate a property whilst the remainder stays living in it, so when first person enters the care home this either means downsizing (not always practical or desireable) or expensive equity release.

Equity release is unlikely to be hugely expensive at that point in their lives. Not expensive enough to make an extremely expensive insurance policy a better solution, at any rate.

People only talk about insurance as a potential solution for care costs because they like to pretend that a potential six-figure liability which a very high proportion of the insurance pool would claim on would cost less than £25 per month in premiums like their home or life insurance. "Insurance" is being used not as a solution but a magic word that will make the cost disappear.

And why would people pay premiums when they see people who didn't pay any care insurance premiums being housed in the same care homes? You already get this complaint all the time, but it's not so much of a problem when care costs come out of home equity or other assets, because at least they got to live in a house and enjoy the benefit of those other assets. There are benefits to being self-sufficient other than the ability to pick your own care home (which is handy as few people value the latter), whereas there are almost no other benefits to paying care insurance premiums.

These drawbacks inexorably lead fans of care insurance to say "well in that case we should make it compulsory like car insurance" and we already have an insurance scheme like that called tax.

AG47

At the end of the day, elderly people will have to use equity from the family home to pay for health care in their old age. This is the problem with modern medicine that people live far longer in their old age.

If they haven't got a family home owned, because they rent, then they will have to go in government old people care homes.

Seabee42

What if there is no money to put them in government old people care homes? This is currently an issue today not for the future.

Arklight

sevenhills wrote: »

Is it the Governments job to pay for our care in old age, suggesting that its 'healthcare' would mean that it should.
This is when it comes back to pressure from the families, should the care for old people with illnesses such as Alzheimers paid for by the NHS?

It doesn't seem to be the government's job to do very much anymore. Considering the salaries thst MPs and civil servants receive maybe we should either pay them a lot less or start expecting them to find solutions to these problems.

Old age care has to be provided and paid for by someone. It's now not possible for many families to reasonably survive on one income so the care that used to be available from one person, usually the woman, staying home to look after kids and elderly relatives is not available.

Many people do give up work anyway and become carers. They get the princely sum of £60 a week if they manage to overcome the many barriers the government intentionally puts in their way of being recognised as such.

The state is already doing very well out of this social contract. It must be, because the richest segment of society, the ones who run the government and own the industries we can't afford to run ourselves anymore added £274 billion to their wealth in the last 5 years.

But when it comes to looking after vulnerable people, there is no money.

https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/wealth-tracker-18

Alzheimers is a terminal brain wasting disease, people with Alzheimers die in hospital, usually fairly rapidly.

phillw

lisyloo wrote: »

I struggle with dressing or bathing someone as healthcare.
Otherwise it should be free for babies and children.
Just suggesting there could be a technical/legal minefield there.

There are enough legal and biological differences between babies and old people that I don't think we need to entertain that line of thought.