Plans for a new National Care Service providing free support for the elderly have been abandoned by the Government.
Rosa Prince
Political Correspondent
Telegraph [UK]
29 Mar 2010
The Daily Telegraph has learnt that in an embarrassing climbdown ministers have scrapped advanced proposals for a compulsory scheme that would have been funded partly by a £20,000 [$29,960] “death tax”.
The decision was made amid fears in Cabinet that arguments over funding would lose votes at a general election due within a few weeks.
For more than a decade, the Government has promised to find a solution to the growing problem of how to fund long-term care for the elderly. At the Labour Party conference last September, Gordon Brown announced proposals for a National Care Service, modelled on the NHS, to provide help regardless of a person’s income.
Ministers began discussing how the scheme would work, including suggestions of offering pensioners the chance to delay retirement or taking a compulsory levy from their estates after their death.
But today, Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, will instead publish a Social Care White Paper that will offer a watered-down package of reforms.
This will include an offer to pay the costs of residential care after two years and a commitment to push ahead with proposals that would provide free care in the home for those with the greatest health needs.
The article continues at the Telegraph.
