Crisis In Care: Follow The Money. Panorama, Tonight 7.30pm.

[Anna B]

15 hours ago, Carbuncle said:

Ridiculous documentary. Only about a minute's worth of information padded with innuendo.

It was disappointingly done IMO, but I wouldn't call it ridiculous. The fact that most care home funding ends up in the Cayman islands tells you all you need to to know. The complexity of the route to get it there is not particularly interesting I agree, but don't forget they have to beware of slander and libel laws, and these are very rich powerful people that they're up against. 

 

[Anna B]

3 hours ago, harvey19 said:

There is only one answer to this and that is care and care homes are provided by the N.H.S.  and paid for by national insurance contributions.

I totally agree, care and care homes should be provided under the umbrella of the NHS. It's ludicrous to separate the two when they are so co-dependent. 99% of old people will need some support in their old age so it would benefit everyone, including their families.

People should not be making huge profits out of the sick, disabled or elderly people. Once again we're talking about major greed and corruption. 

Edited December 7, 2021 by Anna B

[Carbuncle]

20 minutes ago, Anna B said:

It was disappointingly done IMO, but I wouldn't call it ridiculous. The fact that most care home funding ends up in the Cayman islands tells you all you need to to know.

Instead of being able to locate a fire (the crisis in care) the documentary makers pointed to the presence of smoke such as a seemingly complex company organisation some parts of which are domiciled in places associated with secrecy and tax avoidance.

[Anna B]

1 hour ago, Carbuncle said:

Instead of being able to locate a fire (the crisis in care) the documentary makers pointed to the presence of smoke such as a seemingly complex company organisation some parts of which are domiciled in places associated with secrecy and tax avoidance.

Very good analogy. 

 

The issue is money. Plenty going in to make it work well, but not getting to where it's needed because most of it is being siphoned off by the venture capitalists. Care homes should never have been privatised. This is true of so many things under the Conservatives's whose raison d'etre is  prvatising everything in sight. 

 

Some things in our lives are there to provide a service; profit and shareholding in them has no place unless any profit is funelled straight back into the service, via regulation and control. 

The same is true of the NHS and other public utilities which are all suffering the same fate; costs rising, investment falling, infrastructure crumbling, shareholders grabbing.

 

But that's Free Market Economics for you; winner takes all, the beloved ethos of our Tory party, and we are always the losers.

Edited December 7, 2021 by Anna B

[Carbuncle]

2 hours ago, Anna B said:

Plenty going in to make it work well, but not getting to where it's needed because most of it is being siphoned off [by the venture capitalists].

This idea of "overcharging" is an interesting one and the documentary suggested it is happening but they just didn't get close to demonstrating it. They did not have the goods.

Edited December 7, 2021 by Carbuncle

[Anna B]

10 minutes ago, Carbuncle said:

This idea of "overcharging" is an interesting one and the documentary suggested it is happening but they just get close to demonstrating it. They did not have the goods.

I agree.

I am assuming it's because they're supposed to demonstrate impartiality. But the implication was clear enough if not explicit. But yes it needed spelling out.

 

These people get away with it by hiding in ever more complicated webs of obfuscation and deceit, via companies, parent companies, groups of companies, phantom companies, proxy companies and proxy company directors. It was demonstarted how deeply complex it was. We all know it goes on, but proving it is a different matter, and that's what they rely on and hire an army of accountants to fudge it as much as possible.

 

How have we allowed this to happen? 

 

- Oh yes, I forgot, -Free Market Economics....

Edited December 7, 2021 by Anna B

[the_bloke]

28 minutes ago, Anna B said:

Very good analogy. 

 

The issue is money. Plenty going in to make it work well, but not getting to where it's needed because most of it is being siphoned off by the venture capitalists. Care homes should never have been privatised. This is true of so many things under the Conservatives's whose raison d'etre is  prvatising everything in sight. 

 

Some things in our lives are there to provide a service; profit and shareholding in them has no place unless any profit is funelled straight back into the service, via regulation and control. 

The same is true of the NHS and other public utilities which are all suffering the same fate; costs rising, investment falling, infrastructure crumbling, shareholders grabbing.

 

But that's Free Market Economics for you; winner takes all, the beloved ethos of our Tory party, and we are always the losers.

The irony is that in the 1980s people had access to 'supplementary benefit' payments from the DHSS to pay for their state run or private run nursing care. This was uncapped, which led to an explosion of people wanting to be in private care homes instead of famously grim state care homes (usually in old workhouses). This continued until 1993 when the measures in the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 kicked in and by then the old state run care homes had all closed as no one wanted to be in one.

 

No one privatised care homes, there was always a proportion of care homes that were private for people with money. 

 

It was an interesting programme though. It reminded me of football clubs and debt, where owners take out loans and debts against a club as part of the purchase, and it seems to be the case with the firm they picked out in the programme.

[Carbuncle]

1 hour ago, Anna B said:

I am assuming it's because they're supposed to demonstrate impartiality. But the implication was clear enough if not explicit. But yes it needed spelling out.

Sorry, I managed to leave out the word 'didn't' in my last post. I do not think we are in agreement. I would like to know whether widespread overcharging is occurring. It's plausible but I did not know before watching the programme and do not know now.

[ECCOnoob]

13 minutes ago, Carbuncle said:

Sorry, I managed to leave out the word 'didn't' in my last post. I do not think we are in agreement. I would like to know whether widespread overcharging is occurring. It's plausible but I did not know before watching the programme and do not know now.

 Unfortunately you never will know, because as always happens whenever a debate like this is raised, it descends into oversimplification, cherry picking of information, political point scoring and  polarised deep embedded positions that somehow  private enterprise and the corporations are total evil but every part of civil service, government departments, unions and public services are angelic, perfectly run, perfectly managed, continually underfunded  absolute necessities that can never ever be criticised...

 

Add on the deep rooted red vs blue political flag-waving and nothing gets answered.

 

No one is ever prepared to actually spend time take proper interest in the often complex and finite detail as to how exactly problems have evolved. It's always just headline titbits , point scoring, and finger pointing desperately seeking some single thing to blame when in reality it is nearly always a far more complex, wider and nuanced issue which certainly goes well beyond ill thought-out and over simplistic default suggestions of chuck everything back under the remit of the NHS and fund it more.

 

As for the program makers, they don't care whether they answer the question or not. They've done their job.   Quick bit of sensationalism, non conclusive statistics, fire up the debate and get the viewing numbers up.

[Carbuncle]

3 minutes ago, ECCOnoob said:

No one is ever prepared to actually spend time take proper interest in the often complex and finite detail as to how exactly problems have evolved. It's always just headline titbits , point scoring, and finger pointing desperately seeking some single thing to blame when in reality it is nearly always a far more complex, wider and nuanced issue which certainly goes well beyond ill thought-out and over simplistic default suggestions of chuck everything back under the remit of the NHS and fund it more.

I think I could answer the 'question' to my own satisfaction if I could get to the relevant (accounting) numbers and understand what was being provided.

 

For example, last night I also watched a BBC documentary 'Inside the Care Crisis with Ed Balls'. While much of this was touchy-feely there was an interesting case where numbers and context were available. One of the care homes Ed Balls worked at had an Alzheimers patient who the home recommended as needing 24 hour care. His assets funded this for 3 years for a total of a little over half a million pounds. When the money ran out the care was downgraded and the falls began. I feel I can do the math if given the numbers.