Futher To ‘The Cost Of Care’
Certainly in this part of the country, and probably elsewhere, the immigrant workers in the building trade are now departed, because the differential between the cost of living in Britain is no longer what it was. It is reasonable to suspect that the same thing will happen in the care and hospitalisation milieu, where currently there are highly trained, competent and willing immigrants supporting our health services. If this does occur, the cost of having someone in care will escalate to a point where many of the homes will be forced to shut down. I know of one in our district, where the same reason was muted, but whether this is actually correct I don’t know.
Writing further concerning insurance, which appears to be on the menu, I wish to say that I am totally against the system of insurance. The fact that it is required by statute for driving makes it inexorable. What I am finding is that more and more people are considering carrying their own house insurance, working on the principle that the house will not burn down, or ruined by flooding or settlement, feel that they have very little to gain by ensuring the contents of the house, and indeed the structure of the house as in a lot of cases the repair cost is little more than the voluntary excess, and the loss of any ‘no claims bonus’. The structure of the system in such that many feel dissatisfied with the remuneration system operating, and the benchmarks surrounding that.
I raise this because the word insurance was used in the discussion that I heard, and any money that we have to pay in advance for care when we are aged, should be in the form of savings, something which will benefit the government, but at the same time would provide a nest egg for the coming generation if demands were not made, as would be the case with a high percentage of people who never need more than minimal assistance, or none, in their old age. If it is to be a tax to provide help to the whole nation then there are some things which need to be adjusted. Firstly care should not be a postcode lottery. If we are paying a tax, then what we are receiving in help, maybe split into different categories as it is in care homes at the moment, what should be on offer should be consistent throughout the land, not the way it is now where the homes are run by individuals, to their own standards, and in some cases are probably merely to meet the minimum standards required of them by legislation. I have said before that I have seen friends of mine in homes, living in conditions that no one should be required to live in, yet these conditions appear to meet the standards required by law.