Thursday, January 12, 2006

England: Govt. Funded Care for the Elderly cut back to keep taxes down.

A government program, meant to help the elderly, is being forced to cut services because of increased cost and lack of funding. We should take this as an example of a government program this should have been left to free enterprise and Christian charity.


From an article in The Times


January 12, 2006

Elderly face cutbacks in care as councils fight to keep tax down
By Jill Sherman, Whitehall Editor



TOWN halls are planning to withdraw care services from hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled people and to raise charges to keep council tax down this year.

Many councils are now considering raising charges for domiciliary care, which includes bathing, cleaning and dressing the elderly, disabled and infirm, preparing meals and shopping.

Finance officers across the country have been told to cut spending to keep council tax increases below 5 per cent to avoid being capped by John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister. The Times has learnt that authorities are planning to withdraw care from less dependent people altogether by changing the eligibility criteria for home and residential services. They are also planning to raise income by charging more for home care or providing a lower level of services...

“People entitled to services last year will not get the care this year,” Sir Sandy told The Times after a meeting with Mr Woolas. “The picture emerging is a mixture of raising eligibility criteria for social care, charging more and making cuts. Services are being rationed.”



Right now in California the Legislature is deliberating a bill (SB 840) which would institute a Socialized Health Care for all residents of California. This system would no doubt suffer the same setback if not failure as the government programs in England discussed in this article. The more programs our government gets involved in, the more problems it is going to have in meeting the needs of those programs. Like any business the government will have to meet the needs of growing problems. But the government isn't a business, it isn't in it for the money so it is guranteed not to be as effective or efficient as a business with the same focus.

See article against Socialized Medicine

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