Sir Simon Jenkins, writing at the Guardian website, provides us with a useful summary of why the question of social care is so difficult for politicians to confront. His headline sums it up: "We all want to live longer. But someone must pay."
Not surprisingly the article focuses on the question of funding, which seems to be the fundamental question that so many policy issues boil down to; but in the article Sir Simon skirts the real issue, which is this: once social care was not a matter of funding, but was provided in the family. However, nowadays, thanks to family breakdown, and thanks to so many old people consequently living alone, the burden falls on the state.
