The latest Tory plans to mitigate the effects of their own community care reforms, which were introduced with increasingly disastrous consequences four years ago, focus yet again on private insurance.
Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell finally unvelled a scheme through which the government would subsidise the long-term care of the wealthiest 5% of pensioners, if they took out insurance policies to help pay the costs of their own residential care. This follows on Kenneth Clarke's decision to raise the threshold figure for assets above which pensioners are obliged to pay the full cost of residential care.
Pensioners lucky enough to have a lump sum of upwards of £5.400 available to buy an insurance policy paying £45,000 could, under Dorrell's plan buy their way out of the policy of means-tested charges which have compelled tens of thousands of frail elderly people to sell their homes to pay for their own care.
But the scheme would cost the *government a minimum of €200m a year - meaning that low-paid workers would pay through taxathe most wealthy sections of the middle class.
Easy target
The policy Itself was easy meat for Labour to attack. Even the insurance companies, which In theory stand to gain from the scheme, have given only guarded But there is again a booming silence from Labour on what it will do in office to tackle the growing scandal of a "community care" system which robs pensioners of their homes and savinos, even as It falls to deliver compremost in need.
The ritualistic Labour promise of a Royal Commission is nothing more than a pledge to defer the issue for rears to come. But as growng numbers of families confront a yawning gap in care, the problem is one which will snap at the heels of a Blair government from day one.