When Anne turned 75, she was made redundant from her job at a hotel in Kent after guests complained that it made them sad to see elderly people working. With no family, no savings to fall back on, or any pension to speak of, she saw no other way out than to sign up for a voluntary scheme for elderly citizens where you can get a one-off grant. The catch? She needed to agree to be euthanised.
Of course her name is not really Anne and she’s not really from the southeast of England — this is the plot of Plan 75, a dystopian film set in Japan where citizens aged 75 and over are granted the right to an assisted death to remedy an ageing society.
Released here this week, the film, directed by Chie Hayakawa, pushes more than a few boundaries when it comes to ideas of how to deal with an ageing population.
I don’t for a minute suggest this is the solution, but it does raise an important question: how are we going to fund not just getting older but living in ill health for longer? Unsurprisingly, there was no mention of it in this year’s budget, as politicians continue to duck the issue.
But while life expectancy has stalled over the past decade and temporarily fallen due to Covid, the need for care in old age hasn’t. The problem with funding for long-term care is that it is impossible to know how much you will need, if any at all. If you are unlucky it could end up costing you a fortune. It’s a big issue for the squeezed middle — because those with little means are likely to be covered by the state and the wealthy are likely to have enough funds to cover any eventualities.
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A care cap of £86,000 on what anyone will have to spend on personal care is eventually going to be introduced in England, but while it covers nursing and help with anything from dressing and feeding, it does not cover accommodation, food or energy bills.
And with such a big question mark over how much you will need, and most people barely saving enough for their retirement, it’s hard to imagine that many would be in a position to save tens of thousands extra just in case they end up with a large care bill. Let’s face it, it’s not going to happen.
A savings model is not the solution. Instead I agree with Andrew Dilnot, who chaired the Commission on Funding of Care and Support, and the former pensions minister Steve Webb, who argue that a type of insurance model would be a better option. We need a way to pool our risk of being the unfortunate person who ends up with huge care costs with those who won’t need to spend a thing.
But there aren’t any long-term insurance products in the UK (if you discount the “immediate needs annuity” — an insurance policy flogged to people when they are more or less wheeled into a care home). There used to be one but it was expensive and was pulled more than a decade ago after lack of demand.
Rather than discussing long-term care, let’s begin by making the conversation about how to ring-fence family homes so that they are protected from later life costs. This is what many people are worried about. Then link a long-term care product to an existing pension. And perhaps zhuzh it up with a financial incentive — for example, allow savers who want to buy a long-term care policy to use some of their pension without having to pay tax.
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Politicians can’t keep kicking this problem into the long grass. This is not an issue for tomorrow. While none of us would agree with Plan 75, we do need a plan.
@JohannaMNoble
