Attitudes Towards Funding Of Long-Term Care Of The Elderly

March 01, 2006

News

01/03/2006

 

Attitudes Towards Funding Of Long-Term Care Of The Elderly

Embargo: 00:01 am, Thursday 2 March 2006

By James Williams, Gerard Hughes and Sylvia Blackwell (ESRI). Published by the Economic and Social Research Institute. This report summarises the findings of a survey commissioned by the Department of Social and Family Affairs on public attitudes towards the funding of long-term care of the elderly. With current demographic trends indicating the population aged 65 and over will double over the next thirty years, the report seeks to identify the level of acceptance among the general pubic towards different funding options:

 

 

  • privately funded options - based on accumulated savings; equity release schemes; private insurance policies etc.;
  • publicly funded options involve raising revenue through taxes or Social Insurance;
  • a combined model of public-private funding;

The report is based on a survey of over 2,000 randomly selected adults aged 18 years and over. The main results of the survey are as follows:

 

 

  • respondents have a strong preference for receiving long-term care in their own home;
  • there is a clear preference for the delivery of care by family or friends where this is feasible;
  • almost 58 per cent of the population believe that funding of long-term care of the elderly should be the State’s responsibility while almost 36 per cent felt that it should be the combined responsibility of the State and the family;
  • approximately 60 per cent of the population were not in favour of equity release schemes to fund long-term care;
  • just over 40 per cent of adults in the population were in favour, in principle, of increasing income tax and/or PRSI to pay for long-term care while 47 per cent were opposed and 13 per cent were undecided/don’t know;
  • more respondents favoured an increase in Social Insurance than an increase in income tax;
  • the thresholds at which people expressed themselves willing to pay such increases were quite low when they were presented with actual money amounts; an increased cost of €8 per week in PRSI or VAT would be supported by only 17 per cent and 9 per cent of the population respectively;
  • providing for the risk of requiring long-term care is an insurable option and social insurance financing offers the most advantages;
  • a long-term care benefit package could be financed by a PRSI contribution rate of 3 per cent shared equally between the employer and the employee, or about € 8 per week each;
  • as only a minority of the population currently support such an increase in PRSI, it would be prudent to prepare the ground before the adoption of a social insurance based approach to financing long-term care;
  • one way in which this could be done would be to provide information to the public about the risk of requiring long-term care and how much different options of paying for such care would cost;