I Just Can't Believe What I've Just Heard On The News.

[SootySport]

You can gift your house to another family member but then you have to survive a number of years before you are absolved of paying out for care home treatment.

[Norman Verona]

Sootie, Sorry, but I can't agree. The elderly person has probably paid tax and NI all his/her working life. NI=national INSURANCE. In many of these cases the person needs expert care, not just living with son/daughter.

I was at the local tax office and explaining that pension age in the UK was 60 for women and 65 for men. The response was "they'd never get away with that here". However, we continue to let our representatives "get away with it"

[SootySport]

Bit late for us. My mother hasn't had the mental or physical facility to sign anything for the last seven and a half years.

You can apply for Power of Attorney for your mum. The doctor and legal profession can arrange that, not sure who you approach first though.

[SootySport]

Norman , you seem to have forgot that NI has nothing to do with the NHS or indeed insurance, it's just another tax on the workng population. The NHS is funded out of the whole Tax Pot collected by the exchequer.

The retirement ages are changing here, it's not 60 for the fairer sex and 65 for us ugly ones anymore. Out of interest what the situation for elderly care in La France.

[Dibby]

Playing devil's advocate here Norm, yes these people paid in all their lives but iut was this generation that spent the money like there was no tomorrow through the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, now us youngsters are left footing the bill for the hole in the public coffers and the same people that spent it all are now asking for more to fund the care homes.

So do we plough more money into their care homes which will encourage our generation to expect endless handouts off the state? Should we take the money from the schools? The police? The NHS to fund this?

We can't keep pulling money out of our arses for ever, everyone's complaining, the young, the old, the middle aged, we're all feeling the squeeze on public spending - it's one big s**t sandwich and we all have to take a bite

... to plug the hole this generation created for us

[*Emma*]

You can apply for Power of Attorney for your mum. The doctor and legal profession can arrange that, not sure who you approach first though.

My brother has Power of Attorney. There are very strict rules as to what you can and cannot do. We didn't sign over the house when she had the stroke as she wasn't expected to live for five years and she was fully funded. The Court of Protection are very distrustful of what you do with someone else's money!

[housebeautician]

easiest thing to do is sign the house over to the son or daughter then the state cant take the money ,simple

they make you pay for the care until you are down to your last 2k or summat like that i remember marshall telling me when his dad when into a home

They have that covered as well, and the local authority has the power to snatch it back goodness me

[SootySport]

Totally agree with Dibby here. What makes things worse is there is not enough youngsters working, or even being born to sustain a large welfare state, not just this country but all over. Japan has been suffering the this situation for a couple of years now. The way financial systems worked in the past was that there will always bean increasing working population needed to fund governments, pensions and even consume produced goods at an ever increasing rate. This does not happen anymore, I tell you- the capitalist system was not designed for whats coming in the future.

[Tyson]

It's not going to get any better in the future either. With so many youngsters struggling to buy there own property, when they get old and in need of a care home there won't be a house to sell to pay for it.........Then what will the goverment do?

[jeff oakley]

This is nothing to do with people of a certain generation, it is to do with miss managment of the taxes we pay. On top of this the current working age people have decided that for many not working is a career choice and are rewarded by the state to knock out kids with gay abandon. What is scandlous is that the people who have bought their own homes are seen as a cash cow by the state, whereas those who have lived in rented accomadation and had a great time spending their money get the same care for free.

Now personnaly if my parents need care which I cannot provide, I would spend every penny they had in assests to give them the best care I could.

And before we go off blaming the generation for spending our money, they paid taxes which paid for the pensions of the older people that were around when they were and the health care of those as well, so they deserve care, what has changed is that the people are treated differently depending on wether they own their own home or not. They are also treated differently in Scotland where all care is free to all.

But finally think about this, our old people are given a number of people who allegedly care for them, but our prison population have more people to look after them per head, they get 24 hour survailance, jump ques for health care, get three good meals a day, trips out for rehabilitation, heating bills paid for, gyms sky tv etc. If that is what the wrong doers get shouldn't our old people get better.

We need to wake up and demand more from our leaders, I write to mine a lot if more did that they would begin to act. At the moment it is the lobbyists who get their ears not those who pay their wages.

[DuncanH]

When my 85 year old mother suffered a severe stroke (lost all movement on right side, lost speech) seven and a half years ago, she needed to go into a nursing home. She qualified for NHS Continuing Healthcare, and all her care home fees and nursing were paid for. Two years ago, she was re-assessed and it was decided that she no longer qualified despite the fact that her care needs had not changed (fully bed bound, doubly incontinent, tube fed, tendency to pressure sores). She now has to pay a whopping £950 a WEEK in care home fees. That is a scary amount of money.

This absolutely disgusts me! Could you not employ a nurse or even a doctor on that amount and have truly one to one care for that amount.

I am going to be signing everything over to my daughter when she is old enough to recieve it... Actually I might look into trusts (I'm only 33 and shes 3)you never know when the worst could happen. You work hard to give yourself a stable retirement for it to be taken.

Come the revelution... Duncan for dictatorship ;-)

[Norman Verona]

Should we take the money from the schools? The police? The NHS to fund this?

Dibby, No, how about the hospital managers earning huge sums that take about 1/3rd of the NHS budget. Or the thousands of civil servants employed to do jobs that are not needed if were not for our archaic tax and benefit systems. By the way, having worked with the Police for ten years I'd say that the cuts to there budgets can easily be covered by efficiency savings rather than reducing the size of the force.

Sootie, You can describe NI as you wish but it was set up to pay dole money for the unemployed and pensions for the working class.. It was an insurance policy run by the state. Now all forms of taxation seem to go into a general pot, most of which is spent on government and admin which no business would entertain.

All I can say about the French system is they seem to do whatever is needed without thinking about the cost. But they do not have an army of managers to fund and there doesn't seem to be an accountant in sight where medical decisions are made. If you need something you get it and usually without joining a queue. I had to think about things over here when the battle for the Leeds children's heart surgery unit was being considered. Over here they seem to have large centres of excellence for the major medical conditions. They also have huge fleets of ambulances and helicopters to get the patients to and fro.

Over here if you go to the doctor in the morning and he suspects a cancer you're in the clinic that afternoon having a scan. Our nearest cancer clinic is in Nantes, about 100 kms (60 miles) away. I was in my doctors surgery at 12 noon and he thought I had a heart problem. I was seeing the senior cardiologist at the local hospital 2 hours later.

But then France doesn't have a huge Army, Navy or Air Force to fight other people wars, nor an army of managers to look after their doctors and nurses.

The fact is that our politicians have no interest in looking after the people that need help. An example was a Down Syndrome frind of mine went to a day centre 3 days a week. The LA paid for the taxi to take and fetch him. The Government increased carers allowance for his widowed elderly mother. The LA then refused to pay for the taxi. His mother was worse off.

I disagree that benefit misuse is not tackled because of a potential loss of votes as the people who abuse the system probably don't vote. I suspect the real reason is why make problems when you can just leave it alone. In fact I suspect the party that stopped the abuse would be voted in on a landslide vote.

[Norman Verona]

That post took ages and I didn't see Jeff's untill after I'd finished.

Thanks Jeff, as always getting to the point.