Have voters been conned by a broken promise over cap on care home fees?
I OFTEN receive letters from conmen informing me I’ve won a lottery cash prize and telling me to send money to release my winnings. I can see through this scam, but sadly quite a large number of people fall for it and send a payment. Similarly, I expect a sizeable proportion of pensioners who voted Conservative at the last election feel they’ve been subjected to a disgraceful con by Tory leader David Cameron. We’ve learned that his manifesto promise of a cap of £72,000 on care home costs, to be brought in next April, will not now happen. What a betrayal of the many concerned elderly who voted Tory on the strength of this — now broken — promise. And what a pity Mr Cameron didn’t have the guts in the last parliamentary session to tell pensioners the promise of a limit on care home payments has been kicked into the long grass. This from a man who repeatedly tells us to ‘work hard and do the right thing’.
GerALD GANNAWAY, Bristol.
I Feel as if this Conservative Government obtained my vote in the last General election by deception. It promised to cap payments for residential care but has dropped it from the agenda. How can it keep spending on foreign aid and ignore this problem at home? We have had to sell our small family home in Great Malvern, which had been in our family since it was built in 1901. My sister had been living in it, but we needed the money to fund her residential care. she never married, drank, smoked or went on foreign holidays, but had worked and was careful. she had to fund her care herself. Others who hadn’t saved or been prudent had their costs met. What does this tell the younger generation?
DAVID BARNES, Goffs Oak, Herts. IF A man’s father is in a care home (Letters) and the father’s wife or partner is no longer alive, why shouldn’t his house be sold to pay his care home fees? The father no longer needs it. We all enjoy the benefit of the NHS throughout our lives, but we must accept that, if and when we need full-time residential accommodation, it’s only right that those with financial assets (‘the broadest shoulders’ in Governmentspeak) should use them towards their care costs until their assets drop to an agreed level (currently £23,250). Residential care homes are, in the main, run by private companies who charge the full cost of the fees. But, with an ageing population and slowing birth rate, it’s clear that more of us are going to end up in care with fewer members of the working population able to finance and support us through taxation. The sad truth is that some grown-up children would prefer the taxpayer to fund their parents’ health care, thereby ensuring that they inherit as much of their parents’ wealth as possible. But isn’t it more reasonable to accept that your inheritance is what is left after your parents have died and the bills have been paid, rather than trying selfishly to protect their assets to feather your own bed?
GRAHAM WICKS, Attleborough, Norfolk.