The Rights of the Elderly: A Duty of Care

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The Rights of the Elderly: A Duty of Care

After paying taxes their whole lives, thousands of elderly citizens are having to use their life savings to fund nursing home care. Despite an order by Ann Abraham, the Health Service ombudsman, to health authorities and trusts to follow health department guidance to prevent elderly and disabled people from paying out of their own pockets for care that should be given free of charge, today in 2007 tens of thousands of elderly people are still being placed in nursing home care by local social services, means tested, and then charged to the point that they often see their life savings disappear completely. We must ask what happened to the 1946 NHS Act to provide free health care "from cradle to grave".

In 1999, Pamela Coughlan, who was grievously injured in a road traffic accident in 1971, fought and won a landmark test case in the Appeal Court against North and East Devon Health Authority who had wanted to close her Exeter nursing home (where she had been promised a "home for life"), and hand her over to social services. The Court ruled this unlawful.

A key problem is that under the current law, "social care" requires the person to pay for it, whilst for "health care" the NHS is responsible for the funding of the full package. According to campaigners fighting to highlight this issue, health authorities are making a case that many patients leaving hospital to move into care homes are in need of social care rather than health care, thus negating their responsibility to pay the fees. Meanwhile, well-meaning relatives who are dealing with elderly parents, siblings or grandparents in hospitals, are unwittingly allowing them to be discharged into care homes without getting a guarantee that the NHS will pay. The confusion has already led to elderly retirees selling their homes to pay for care they believed they would get free after decades of working and paying taxes to the state.

However, concerned families have started fighting back in the form of campaign groups. Robin Lovelock who set up a website advising families faced with huge bills, stated, "We advise people not to be rude but to give the NHS the one-page ‘flyer’ from our site which points out the law." Lovelock also said that "We’ve had cases where someone has told us that the hospital is pressurising them to find a suitable nursing home as quickly as possible, as an NHS bed costs £2000 a week." Good care homes cost around half that. If patients own their own home they would be expected to pay for care by selling their home. When their savings are exhausted, only then do the council step in and pay. This pressure on NHS beds shows that the government and respective authorities put the onus on money, making it a question of finance rather than health care. While the elderly and disabled are full members of the society, the society is not providing for them. Instead, their certain right to be cared for by the society is subverted by a greedy elite who see health care as a private finance concern in which to make huge profits. Meanwhile those who contributed most to the society, i.e. the workers, see their homes and savings being stolen by the state and the private sector.

Whether or not a person needs "health care" or "social care" is not the issue. The people of the society should have their rights fully recognised to be provided for by the society, in both health and social needs. The elderly are being robbed after a life of giving and working for the society. Those who are the thieves, the monopolies and the state which represent them, are putting the livelihoods of the elderly and disabled out to dry, without any concern. As a society all must be protected and enabled to fulfil their potential in terms of health and as human being as a whole. The present government with its agenda to push all health care into the private sector will not provide the elderly with an answer to their calls for justice. Only the people have the power to create a situation where the rights of the elderly and all other sections of the people receive as much they give to the society. The people must become the decision makers at the helm of a democratic society which has the concern of all the members and their needs at its centre.