Catholic Health Australia CEO Pat Garcia has called for the lifting of the $200,000 cap on home value in the means test for aged care.
Calling housing wealth the “elephant in the aged care room” in an opinion piece for the Australian Financial Review, Pat said that, with the median house price in Australia now $1 million and many seniors owning homes far exceeding that value, continuing to factor only the first $200,000 of a home’s value into the means test is “an irrationality we can no longer afford”.
“We cannot turn a blind eye to this enormous potential source of funding any longer. The cap needs to be lifted or removed.
“I understand the political difficulty of this. The pollie coming after grandma’s home is not a sought-after role on the public stage. But what is the alternative? Allow aged care standards to cascade? Force working-age people to dip deeper into their stretched incomes? Just wait patiently for our national debt levels to improve sufficiently?” he said.
The Catholic Health Australia boss has previously advocated for a “user pays” model such as Plan B, telling SATURDAY last year that aged care co-contributions could be linked to a user’s ability to pay, with those of lesser means able to access safety nets.
