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Elderly people forced to put their homes on the market in order to meet their nursing home bills have found a champion in the form of Sir Derek Wanless, who, in a paper for the health think-tank, the Kings' Fund, has demanded a massive £19 billion a year increase in state funding for nursing homes. In future, he wants granny to be able to hang on to her property when she goes into care - and have the joy of passing it on to her children.
Hard as I have tried, I just cannot seem to sympathise. I am sure it is very upsetting when you watch your beloved home put on the market against your will, and when your children, who thought they were in line for a fat inheritance, realise that it will all be eaten up in your nursing home fees.
But what about people whose parents are not homeowners, and who are probably
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| Propertied oldies should sell their houses to pay for nursing care, says ross clark |
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struggling to afford a home of their own: why should they be forced to pay extra tax to subsidise your inheritance?
Providing nursing care for the elderly is an expensive business, but surely it is fairest that the costs are met by the people actually using the service rather than by taxpayers in general. The rest of us have to cash in our assets if we discover that our living costs exceed our income; why should it be any different for granny?
If the Wanless proposals are adopted by the government our residential streets will become full of boarded-up homes, whose incapacitated owners have no further need for them but cling onto them just for the pleasure of knowing, as they recline in their easy chairs at the Sunset Nursing Home along the road, that they still qualify as homeowners.
To cap it all, I suspect these propertied oldies will moan about high taxes - without thinking how much the taxpayer is coughing up to keep them in clean bed linen. 
FIRST POSTED APRIL 3, 2006
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