Ministers can hardly claim to be ill-informed about the choices ahead for social care. Barely a week goes by without a doom-laden report from another think-tank warning that ‘we can't go on like this' and offering funding alternatives, invariably involving more tax. The latest is from the Health Foundation and The King's Fund (see The MJ last week).

It is a well-argued examination of other ways of funding care, both for local authorities and users and like other studies, it starts from the premise that the current system is broken and governments can't go on just baling it out with ad hoc bungs from the Treasury. Virtually all experts and the report's launch last week was packed with them, agree.