The Dilnot report in July 2011 recommended a cap on individual care fee funding of £35,000 for individuals with assets of more than £100,000.
In July 2012, the government's white paper outlined a timetable up to 2015 but left the "£35,000 cap" question unanswered.
And now, the government's latest plans - which do not come into effect until 2017/2018 - are to cap long-term care fees at £75,000 per person.
But this excludes accommodation and food costs which will be subject to a further annual (not lifetime) cap of £12,500 per person. Nothing is retrospective, so people caught in the care-fees-funding trap right now will get no possibility of respite until 2017.
From 2015, there will also be the option of deferring the cost of care until after death, when the money owed becomes a charge on the estate. This effectively imposes additional tax on the estates of the less well off.
Freezing the inheritance tax threshold at £325,000 until 2019, to help fund the proposed care fee reforms, again leaves the wealthy relatively unaffected. Up to 40,000 people currently have to sell their homes to pay for care.
While the announcement of the cap of £75,000 is of course welcomed, the manner in which the solution has been put together is alarming. The cap, being so high, leaves many still vulnerable to chronic care costs at an early stage while the wealthy or better-off remain relatively unaffected.
The obvious omission of accommodation and food costs from the lifetime cap may push these costs up to the threshold limit each year, if care home providers seek to "rebalance" income streams against possible downward pressure from local authorities on care fee costs that now fall within their responsibility.
In an environment where NHS in-patients would expect to receive complimentary accommodation and food while being cared for, the government appears to draw a line of differentiation between temporary medical care and longer term (medical) care, presupposing that the latter is somehow a voluntary or self-inflicted requirement.
Long term care fees funding remains an essential and integral part of the key financial planning and specialist discussions we have with our clients, regardless of age or, in fact, youth.
While the announcement is helpful, it is still felt to be too little, not happening soon enough and with little vision for the brighter future we hoped for. It could do better.
Neil A Sewell is a chartered financial planner at advice firm Sewell Bryden Gunn
