The fact that the NHS is failing to provide the most basic standards of care for the elderly will hardly come as a shock for patients and their relatives. Sadly the cases revealed in the Health Ombudsman’s report including that of a woman not bathed or showered during a 13-week hospital stay - or another delivered to a care home strapped to a stretcher and soaked in urine - aren’t isolated incidents. They are all too common tales among relatives.
The uncomfortable truth is that our care system doesn’t work and successive governments have consistently ducked the issue, failing to make the potentially unpopular but necessary reforms. Deficit reduction aside, arguably the government’s most pressing priority is devising a system that can actually support the needs of a rapidly ageing population, allowing them to live in comfort and dignity after years of contributing to the economy.
The government’s own projections show how the clock is ticking on this issue. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility if we stayed with current policies, age-related public expenditure would rise to over a quarter of GDP by 2039. In 20 years the number of over 90s is expected to treble, and with over half of spending in health and social care already going on the over 85s, in a few years we simply won’t cope with our elderly population.
The government is relying on a commission of three, led by the former head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies Andrew Dilnot, to come up with ideas on how to meet the costs of caring for the elderly. It’s expected to report by July but the indications are that it will rule out any compulsory payments such as insurance fearing that the public, already having their wallets battered from all sides and services cut, simply won’t tolerate it. But will they tolerate a system where decent care is a lottery, where the care profession is poorly paid and undervalued and where relatives are increasingly stepping in where the state is shrinking back? The fact is we already pay for care of the elderly. Families contribute to care home fees, meals and wheels and for carers in a system that is opaque, unfair and indiscriminate.
The government now has an opportunity for an open debate with its taxpayers about what sort of a society we want to create and the sort of care systems we’re willing to fund. We have to devise a transparent system where we know what we should be getting, what we need to contribute and when. Forget flogging the Big Society. David Cameron should be addressing the value that we put on caring for our elderly. Surely the Big Debate should about how much the state can provide and how much taxpayers should contribute to their future care? As the ombudsman found this week, what we have now clearly isn’t working.
Karen Day is a freelance journalist
