It is actually an expense to read this article as it sits behind the i newspaper’s paywall. I decided to sign up to the paper (can I call it that) because I am genuinely interested in the argument for paying state pension to those who are expected to die before they can get paid their state pensions. It’s £20 for a year and if it gets enough proper subscriptions , I may get to renew in a year’s time. It’s a payment in hope!
Right now I can’t get my access to work and worry – so the best I can give you is my thoughts on Ros Altmann’s Linked in post which links to this (if you can get to your ipaper account)!
Terminally ill to have early payment state pension? My response
An ill-health early retirement feature on the State Pension would be expensive to administer as every claim would need to be checked and the cost of administration could be a significant additional payment to the state pension payments that would be made.
There is of course no upside for other tax-payers who aren’t unlucky enough to look like they’re going to die so we’d have to see paying the state pension early to those with limited life-expectancy as a kind of compensation for not paying it later.
But where do you stop? Do you admit that those who die before they reach the “ever rising state age” are deserving to leave their inheritors a payment? Are spouses being done out of their residual pensions by their partner not making it to state pension age.
Going down this route comes a whole set of questions about fairness which lead to some important questions about social insurance. We run a state pension system to help those who live not those who don’t and it’s a brutal truth that our state pension system is not here to pay early retirement pensions to those who may or may not live longer.
We all know people alive to day who have expected to die and we celebrate every day of their lives- so long as they want to live. Those who choose to die in Switzerland voluntarily bringing on their deaths because life is unbearable are people who deserve compassion. But they do create problems for life insurers and I suspect that there would be further problems for them, if they were in a state pension that had been granted to help them live.
I think that the rules surrounding the state pension are fixed and can only be discussed in a formal way by a Pension Commission (we have one going on right now). Of all the things that the Pension Commission has to discuss, my guess is that an ill-health early retirement state pension is low on the priorities. But Jeannie Drake and Ros Altmann are both members of the upper house of parliament and I am sure that they could address this issue socially to see whether there is merit in it.
For me, and at 63 I might be a candidate any day, I have no expectation of insurance from the state pension before my state pension age in just over 4 years time. My partner was told I had a 10% survival chance as she gazed on me in hospital, I appear to have been a 9-1 shot who unexpectedly won.
I do not want to be a burden on the legal system or the DWP as if I am to have a short life expectancy, I will be a burden on the NHS. I hope that I don’t cause the NHS any further problems but am happy to claim on my NHS insurance if I do.
So – without reading the article because despite paying my i subscription , I can’t get to Ros’ article, I don’t agree with the concept of an ill-health version of the plan , for those who won’t live to get VFM from their national insurance.
Life and national insurance have winners and losers. It’s like that. Ill health state pension to terminally ill people is a non-starter for me.