We all know we can’t escape death and taxes, though death does end your battle with the tax office! Now, however, the Albanese Government is set to add aged care to this cliché. It seems we’ll soon be forced to pay a lot more for aged care or be slugged a lot more tax!

The Australian’s Jess Malcolm tells us that Labor plans to ask would we “…prefer to pay more tax or pay more for care?”. This will be a big issue for the elderly, disabled people and veterans. The Government’s argument is that it will make these care services more financially ­viable.

The combined wack of aged care, disability services, childcare and looking after veterans is expected to blow out to $110 billion a year by 2026-27, so we’ll be forced to pay more going forward.

A document released yesterday bluntly told us that the cost blowout for future budgets to keep providing these services means “…there needs to be a broader national conversation about the expectations on government-funded service provisions and the relative contribution between governments and individuals.”

A national debate is expected to be carried on until the end of June and the bottom line looks clearcut — the wealthier you are, the more you’ll be expected to pay.

The Australian reports that “…Catholic Health Australia, Council on the Ageing, Aged & Community Care Providers Association and leading aged-care ­financial analyst Stewart Brown [are] urging Labor to raise the means-testing threshold for housing wealth by increasing consumer contributions.”

Economists who specialise in this space have been talking about a ticking bomb, as the demand for these services grow as we age and as we expect more from governments, such as childcare and disability services.

For example, the National Disability Insurance Scheme is projected to blow out to $52 billion by 2025-26. Many critics of the scheme say those who really need help are competing with others who could afford to pay for assistance.

Grattan Institute Health and Aged Care director Peter Breadon told The Oz that Australia needed to have a debate about the funding model for care services in the context of a “big, long-term and looming demographic crisis after a legacy of structural underfunding of these jobs”.

Those with a target on their backs will be wealthy Australians who access aged care services at too low a cost, given their wealth. How do we know this? Well, note what University of Melbourne Honorary Professor Stephen Duckett says.

Duckett looks at aged care and calls out the “muddled and inconsistent” consumer contributions in the system. He simply argued that richer Australians have been able to use their wealth in an unfair way because of flawed structures of capital contributions for aged care.

Right now, the charges for services by aged care providers are pegged at about $30,000 per resident, or 85% of a single person’s basic aged pension. But it’s with property the experts think charges need to change.

“Elderly Australians are also only means tested for entry into an aged care home, with the government considering up to only $186,000 of their property wealth irrespective of the value of their home, meaning a person who owns a modest home is means tested at the same level as a person who has a mansion,” Jess Malcolm explains.

So, the big question that has to be the focus point for this upcoming debate will be: Who is considered to be rich? And how much will you lose to enter aged care if you happen to have a valuable house?

The richer you are (or the luckier you’ve been in real estate), the more likely it is that your aged care costs are set to rise in the foreseeable future.

We once nodded in agreement when someone said: “nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. Now I’ll add “paying more for aged care” will be another certainty.

The attack on childcare is less likely in the short run because it would mean the Government would be like Napoleon, who fought on too many fronts and ended up in exile on the island of Elba, which tourists nowadays think looks OK! Still, for Napoleon, it was a long way from Paris!