Placing house in a trust

eskbanker

zagfles said:

eskbanker said:

zagfles said:

eskbanker said:

zagfles said:

eskbanker said:

zagfles said:

eskbanker said:

sevenhills said:
I believe rich and poorer people should be treated the same.

Means-testing is a sound principle to ensure that financial assistance is deployed to those who need it - it would clearly be possible to eliminate it and have everyone's later life care funded by the state, whether or not they could afford to pay for it, but that would entail an additional taxation burden for all for the benefit of the richer, which is hardly going to be a vote-winner....

Means testing is not a "sound principle", if it is do you think we should use it for the NHS? If you get cancer, do a means test to see if you can afford to pay for your treatment. Yeah - why not, if it's such a "sound principle".

Means testing benefits the rich. It hits middle income people. It's neutral for the poor. Generally taxation increases with income/wealth (if we ignore the myth that the rich don't pay tax, it's rubbish, most rich people pay or have paid much more in tax than those less rich), so by means testing you reduce the cost to the taxpayer, which benefits you more the more tax you pay.

A rich person who gets care paid by state is likely to have paid for it several times over in taxes, a middle income person who needs care is likely to have paid less tax towards that care than it costs, they get subsidised by those who never needed care.

It is a sound principle in that it's a perfectly valid and justifiable approach, but clearly there are other options, so there's plenty of room for reasoned debate.  The NHS argument is just a strawman in the context of this thread, so I'm not advocating means-testing for primary care (or for state pensions if we're going to introduce other universal provisions into the conversation), but the point is that state funding of later life care costs is currently bracketed with other means-tested benefits, so if that was to change then there'd be a price to pay in additional taxation, although it's a fair point that this could potentially be slanted more towards the rich.

If you're arguing that means testing is a "sound principle" then the NHS is not a strawman, if this "sound principle" applies to later life care costs why shouldn't it apply to NHS primary care? It's the same principle - costs might be incurred if you get cancer and need treatment, costs might be incurred if you get Alzheimers and need care, if it's a matter of principle then what's the difference?

Of course you could argue that means testing later life care costs should apply but means testing cancer treatment shouldn't, but then clearly it's not down to principle, it's down to making a choice to fund different forms of care differently. I suppose the main argument is that later life care tends to be a one way journey so it matters less if you have to spend your entire life savings and house on it.

You're using 'principle' in a different sense from me (my use of 'sound principle' could perhaps be rephrased as 'valid methodology') but I do agree that "it's down to making a choice to fund different forms of care differently" - this is all about political choices!  I can't say I've devoted vast amounts of time researching it, but to the best of my knowledge the current differential treatment of funding primary versus later life care will have prevailed since the creation of the NHS in 1948 so there have been many governments who could have chosen to extend the state's responsibilities over that time if they'd felt the need to, so the current government is just perpetuating the longstanding status quo....

Fair enough - it just sounded like you were using it to mean a methodolgy that was the accepted way of doing things and doing things differently would be a vote loser. The way the NHS is funded seems to be quite popular.

The NHS funding model is obviously well established, but it does seem plausible that back in 1948 some would have asserted that it's unfair to provide state funding to those who could afford to pay!  However, to turn the question round the other way, if you believe that eliminating means-testing of later life care, thereby extending the state's financial obligations, would be politically popular, why hasn't any government of the last 73 years done so?

In that sense I'd argue that the current setup is effectively accepted (by the majority) - that's not to say that different choices couldn't be made of course but personally I don't see it as some historical injustice that needs to be corrected, it would be a straight political choice between two different funding models - the status quo could be seen as unfair, but so could the alternative....

I do take the point though that the current mix of funding models could be argued to be inconsistent, in that some state provisions are means-tested while others ignore ability to pay, so there is an argument that from a purist perspective we should go to one extreme or the other, and that anything else in between is inherently flawed!

The trouble is nothing is politically popular, that's why successive govts have been too chicken to act. Or rather, the confrontational nature of politics and journalism makes it suicidal to act. The same would happen the other way round - if any govt dared to try to means test NHS treatment, or the state pension. It's not so much "what's fair and consistent", but the obsession with who the "winners and losers" are, it's the change that's analysed not the end result.

So whatever any govt does, they'll be handing a weapon to political opponents, and journalists who seem to think it's their duty to always look for the bad in any govt decision while ignoring the good, who will cherry pick aspects to use to prove how the govt is "out of touch", "doesn't care", is "looking after their mates" , "taxing the wrong people" etc. Like the "dementia tax".

A jaundiced and wearily cynical (but entirely realistic) assessment of the relationship between journalism and politics!

Having said that, it still seems to me that, of all those who could do with more state assistance, there are many groups with a stronger case than those seeking care funding in order to preserve wealth to hand on to their offspring, so I'd expect that to be off the agenda for the foreseeable future....