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Huge opposition to care charges
By: Linda Steele
The Guardian, April 26, 2001
Almost two-thirds of the public believe that people with long-term illnesses should not have to pay for nursing and personal care services, according to a leading health charity.
A survey from the King's Fund reveals that most people back the recommendation of the royal commission on long term care that neither nursing nor personal care should be means-tested, whether provided in a hospital, nursing home or at home. The news is a sharp reminder to the government, in the run-up to a general election, of the lack of support for its policy of means-testing for personal care costs.
"Our survey shows that both the government and the opposition are out of step with the majority of people over what is seen to be fair in long-term care funding," said King's Fund chief executive Rabbi Julia
Neuberger.
"Ministers' arguments that universally free personal care would only benefit the well-off do not persuade most members of the public. Redistribution can be achieved much more fairly through taxation than through means-tests, which older people often find demeaning and stressful."
Opinion pollsters NOP surveyed 1,000 people over the age of 25, living in England, in February. More than half those surveyed, no matter what their earnings, believe that the state should fund personal care such as help with bathing, eating, dressing and using the toilet.
Perhaps surprisingly, more than half surveyed also think that the government should fund accommodation (or "hotel") costs in nursing homes - which both the government and the royal commission rejected. The royal commission, chaired by Sir Stewart Sutherland, was set up by the government in 1997 to look at the funding of long-term care.
The survey shows that people of all age groups hold broadly the same view. This represents a shift in public opinion from previous years, when fewer people were in favour of making long-term care free of charge.
"One person in four will need long-term care when they get old. When they do, under current proposals, only very narrowly defined nursing care will be provided without a means test," said Rabbi
Neuberger.
"Asking people to provide for such a random event in their lives as Alzheimer's disease or a bad fall is no more ethical or rational than asking them to pay for cancer treatment. It is very likely that such an approach will fail within a few years."
"Regardless of which party forms the next government, the issue of long-term care funding - and the false distinction between nursing and personal care - will not go away."
The government countered that it was spending more on intermediate care to prevent older people going into residential homes. Money was better spent on improved health and social services, rather than providing free care, said health minister John Hutton.
"Overall, we are matching the additional expenditure on services for older people recommended by the royal commission but we have chosen to devote the lion's share to improving the range of services available to older people so that they can recover more quickly and avoid unnecessary admission into care homes. These services will be free at the point of use," he said.
"We are making nursing care free in nursing homes from this October, making the funding of long-term care fairer and more equitable and giving responsibility to the NHS where it should be. But we can't spend the same money twice."
Charities for older people said the survey showed the public wanted the government to go further in funding care.
Help the Aged's head of public affairs Mervyn Kohler said: "The King's Fund poll adds to the current momentum to develop a fairer policy between what care the state provides and what people need personally to pay for. Help the Aged and partner organisations are campaigning strongly to make personal care free."
He pointed out that in Scotland personal care is to be free of charge from 2002.
A spokeswoman for Age Concern said that, by rejecting the royal commission's key recommendation to fund personal care at an estimated cost of £1.1bn, the government would force thousands of older people "in desperate need of care to go through the undignified and often complicated process of means-testing or otherwise having to give up their savings to pay for it".
She added: "With just weeks to go before a general election, politicians have got to start listening to the public's voice. They must go further than producing a false divide between nursing and personal care, and instead offer a fairer, clearer system of funding."
• The results of the survey are contained in A Fair Deal for Older People? by Chris Deeming, published today by the King's Fund. |
