by Mike McNabb
Trickle, trickle. Since the launch of the welfare state after the second world war we have slowly become accustomed to paying for the services originally intended as being funded wholly by tax.
Whether it is dental checks, eye tests or home care for older people, the private sector has gradually eroded the axiom of free care at the point of delivery.
(One day most of us will be service users)
And have we protested? Well, a bit: we have penned stiff letters to the press all right, but the streets have remained empty of marauding hordes angered by the loss of our treasured freebie.
Because trickle, trickle is easier for governments to manage than a single torrent of privatisation. Now that really would have filled the streets of Sleepy Hollow UK.
Services starved of funds
One thing can be inferred from this: if services are starved of funds for long enough then desperation sets in - a certain resignation, if you like - and those of us who can afford to pay are prepared to give up our principles in order to maintain a certain quality of life. Hence the growth of private health care.
Just to prove the point, the Caring Choices coalition has found that we may be willing to part-pay for long-term social care if the result is improved services, as Lord Wanless recommended last year in his report commissioned by the King's Fund. Trickle.
Peter Beresford, professor of social policy at Brunel University, is less than impressed by the way Caring Choices' research was carried out, pointing out the paucity of service-user involvement in compiling the report.
A lost cause?
Over time the idea of free social care has been made to seem like a lost cause. But it need not be so.
One day most of us will be service users in some shape or form, if we are not already. And if we fail to make our feelings known now, boy, are we going to pay for it.
Is free social care now a lost cause? Take part in the poll below.
Surely if we admit to Social care being a lost cause .. it will be ?
How idealistic is the notion that those with the postion to cause change, will eventually see the enormous power contained within that decision ?
Agreed maurauding hordes of protestors may only prompt people to discuss matters for a short while .. so how else should quiet revolutions be in motion ...