Free Care for the Elderly: If You Can Afford It

So the Tories have announced their plan to provide free care for the elderly. Right after Labour have announced theirs to cover only those who most need it, the Conservatives announce theirs for those who can afford it, or at least an £8,000 insurance premium paid when you retire. The idea so they say is to prevent people having to sell their home to go into residential care.

I have an issue with that, many of the poorest members of our society don't have savings of £8,000 pounds. If they are lucky that money is tied up in their work pension scheme and not gathering investment in a bank.

One of my own grandmothers owned her own two up two down terrace but as a widow of nearly over 17 years when she hit 65 she didn't have £8,000 stored away. When she was in her 80's she finally could no longer look after herself at home and had to sell up. My other Grandparents were in the fortunate end of things financially, but she still needed specialist care for Alzheimer's in her later years. Obviously the family would have benefited in the later case from the protection of the estate but would not have been able to in the former.

The Tories are saying this system is voluntary. Well of course it is not everyone is going to be able to afford it as pointed out above. The people who will benefit from it are those at the top end. Families of the lower income end of things are still going to have to sell that home and plough the proceeds into paying for that care.

I was watching Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley earlier on the BBC and two comments really grated with me. The first was when he called this system a genuine insurance system. We may have a regressive tax system called National Insurance, but there is a hint in the name of that taxation. It is the system that the nations employee's all pay into according to their wages in order to benefit from through health, care and pension provision. While the poorer do pay disproportionately more, it does in theory provide equal access to service. The Tories proposals will be providing a two-tier system with the wealthy being the beneficiaries.

The second thing that grated was that although everyone joining at 65 would be able too irrespective of medical condition, the Tories will be extending the scheme for a limited time to anyone over that age. However, if there is any condition that may necessitate you needing residential care currently present and you are over 65 you will be excluded. Not only are the Tories creating an obstacle to enter the scheme based on wealth but they are also creating barriers based on health.

We all can see just who the caring Tories are caring for. Their own wealthy supporters not those on the lowest incomes. Personally I'm glad that the Lib Dems made sure that universal health care at home is provided in Scotland, and have it as policy to extend to the rest of the UK.

If Age is No Limit on Safety

The Blood Transfusion Service has announced plans to extend existing donors ability to give blood beyond their 70th birthday. It is a move seen as increasing the available pool as blood by about 15,000 donation per annum (of course with the addition of my Y Chromosome the odds of me getting that far based on familial precedent are slim). It will not apply to new donors who must start before their 65th birthday as at present and donations must be within 2 years of the last donation made to continue this extension. The service said that:

"given the steady improvement we have seen over recent years in the general
fitness of our older donors, it is now safe for us to remove our upper age limit
for donation."

So NHS Blood and Transplant are able to lift arbitrary provisions when they see that it is safe to do so. Which leads to the other arbitrary limit that does hit the headlines. Men who have had sex with another man, either orally or anally, with or without protection.

The Blood Transfusion Service will argue about men who continue to practice having sex with other men seeing as it is a high risk group. Something that while many in that group feel aggrieved about can see some justification in the argument from the statistics. However, while a woman who has had sex with a man so excluded can give 12 months after that relationship is terminated, a man who may have experimented in his past whether 2, 10, 20 or 30 years ago cannot. Is there not some way that such a group can been shown as safe after all this time? Especially as they are as at risk as those already included in the service's "donor selection rules".

When will the service see such men as being now safe? Indeed how are they certain that the simple question asked by such a group is not already by passed by any of their donors? If it is so far in their past it may be something that certain people may consider an irrelevance to their donating and makes the policing of such an arbitrary ban almost impossible to enforce.

If the Blood Transfusion Service is using word's like safety, fitness regarding their older donors they should look at what they do consider safe, prudent etc on some of their other arbitrary limitations.

Nats Robin Hooding the Young and the Old

The latest effect of the SNP tightening of the bugetary purse strings may well the free bus travel for the over 60s.

It is another incentive that is currently facing a Governemnt review and like other policies under such review the spending will be cut while the review gets under way. The result is that the reimbursement to the bus companies will not cover their increased costs with the rising fuel prices if they keep it at being available to the over 60s and the age may increase to those over 65 as a result.

This comes the day after new drink laws were proposed which could further alienate young people by not allowing under 21s to buy drink from off licences, at the same time as many are trying to give those over 16 a vote. The much cited Armadale experiment did seem to lead to an increased number of young people and police presence in the streets of Bathgate over the trail period. Also many people have pointed out that the continent has actually lower drinking age which is true, they also forget that they have less of a binge drinking problem.

The problem with prohibiting young people from acquiring drink only makes it more attractive to try and get some. Also once acquired by surepticious means it is more likely to be consumed in a hurry causing further problems. Responsible drinking requires responsible drinking laws.

If both Nat policies take effect they could be facing a reaction from both the youngest and oldest voters.

Most Flummoxed Cold Caller Ever

Chris K has just posted about his Worst Cold Caller Ever and like Chris I too work in a call centre environment so know a little of what the person on the other end of the line goes through.

So I'd like to nominate my most flummoxed cold caller ever. It was shortly after the Labour/Lib Dem Scottish executive had introduced free personal care for the elderly, and if I remember correctly I was in full General election mode of highlighting our sucesses. This is how the conversation went.

Caller: 'Hello can I take a few moments of your time to ask a few questions?'

Me: (unusually) 'Certainly.'

Caller: 'Have you heard that the Scottish Executive have introduced free personal care for the elderly?'

Me: (grinning in anticipation of the next question) Yes

Caller: 'How did you hear about it?'

Me: 'When it was debated at the Liberal Democrat conference.'

Caller: 'Oh..... I don't know how to put that down....can I ....put you down as read about it in literature.'

Me: (now unable to supress the giggles) 'Well I suppose I did see it in the agenda first, so that's fine.'

Caller: 'OK I have some further questions...and you probably know more about this than I do....'

And so the questions continued about the details and whether or not I agreed with various things. Quite a fun call but you sence the caller was panicked to actually find someone with a greater knowledge of the subject matter than their brief training probably involved.

Flummoxing a Market Researcher

Last night I had the great pleasure of flummoxing a call calling market researcher on the phone. The opening question of his survey was 'Have you heard about the Scottish Executive policy of free personal care for the elderly?'. Well as a good Scottish Liberal Democrat I had to say yes.

His second question was 'Where did you hear about this?'. Well, I told the truth and told as someone who stood for the Liberal Democrats in last years general election I first heard of it while we were preparing the manifesto for the 2003 election. The poor guy did not have a box to tick for this. There wasn't even other for him to fill in. So the closest he could find was heard from council.

Unfortunately, the only reason I have heard from my local council about free personal care for the elderly was when they were found to be charging pensioners for their meals service.

Anyway the poor researcher rattled off his questions and was getting total agreement to all the questions he was raising. But it possibly made his day to have someone able to answer so succinctly and precisely to the questions he was raising instead of asking 'what do you mean?' every so often.