14.12.11
Elderly social care reforms ‘postponed’
Reforms of funding for elderly care may not be completed until 2025, reports suggest.
Andrew Dilnot, the economist whose report into social care earlier this year recommended a series of reforms to protect pensioners from having to sell their homes to pay for care in later life, said such a delay would be “unacceptable” if true.
His recommendations were that individuals should take out private insurance to cover the first £35,000 of any nursing or care home costs they might incur in old age, costs should be capped and care bills over the £35,000 limit should be paid by the state.
However, it is proving difficult for the Treasury to source the extra £1.7bn a year the scheme would require, reports suggest, and the reform of social care funding may not even feature in the white paper due in the spring, according to the Daily Mail newspaper.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said the Government was “looking at a whole range of options”, including the possibility of a higher tax on the elderly to fund their care, and acknowledged that it could take “10 to 20 years” before some of the key parts of the reforms will come into effect.
He continued: “Do we think all of this is achievable with the current level of resources? Clearly not. The point of Dilnot was that additional resources need to be brought into play but there are a range of ways in which he suggested that might happen.”
Andy Burnham, Labour’s health spokesman, told the Daily Mail: “ England’s care crisis is urgent and this is not good enough from the Health Secretary. He might be prepared to wait 15 years, but the thousands who stand to lose their homes haven’t got that long.”
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