Social care is the most intractable problem faced by generations of British politicians due to our aging population.So much so that for decades they have all managed to put off making the difficult decision - how do we pay for it? That is the multi-billion dollar question, but currently we are paying heavily for the crisis in pounds as well as human cost.The financial costs are largely hidden from view - paid for by the NHS, local councils and families whose life savings are wiped out because they're unfortunate enough to have a relative with complex needs.Also hidden behind closed doors is the human cost, in the miserable existence of lonely elderly people living with what the system terms “unmet need”.‌Hidden also is the lost potential of thousands of middle aged carers who have to quit their jobs to care for a parent. Not so hidden are the thousands of elderly and vulnerable people lining our hospital corridors every day who shouldn’t be there.When Andy Burnham says the NHS will collapse if we don’t sort social care he is referring to is the issue of delayed discharges that are crippling hospitals.Last month 14,000 medically fit patients were stuck in hospital every day in England, mainly because they could not get social care to be safely discharged somewhere else.‌This was up 12% since June 2024 when it was 12,000 and is up 70% since 2021. And there is a huge cost to this already. Delayed discharges are now costing the NHS £230 a month. The annual cost in 2025/26 was £2.7 billion.The human cost of that was spelled out in a recent report from Age UK. The charity collated heartbreaking accounts from elderly people who lost their health and independence as their home care visits were cancelled because they were in hospital - which meant they then couldn’t be discharged home.Any prolonged stay in a hospital bed for an elderly person risks irreversible loss of muscle mass and mobility. One 70-year-old told the Mirror how she had to discharge herself to a budget hotel and had been living there for five months.‌The Mirror has launched the Fair Care for All campaign calling for a government to finally bite the bullet. The campaign calls for all older people to be treated with dignity and respect.Our demands include the creation of national care service to run alongside the NHS, the appointment of minister for the elderly and a properly-funded care system that works for everyone.The campaign also calls for a fair deal for care workers. We are calling for carers to be paid the real Living Wage, an end to home visits of 15 minutes or less and an increase in the allowance for unpaid carers.Mr Burnham - whose dad Roy has Alzheimer's disease and lives in a care home - is expected to give a major speech on social care this week. He told the BBC: "Whatever political capital I have, I will put in to fixing broken social care.”‌This isn't without political risk given the salutary tale of one former Prime Minister in Theresa May who - to her credit - actually attempted to tackle the issue with a plan that was criticised as a "dementia tax". The solution must lie in a new system where the risk of catastrophic care home costs is shared across the population.A kind of insurance against losing your family’s entire savings, sometimes built up over generations, simply because you were unlucky enough to develop dementia and live a long time with it. However, the cost of that will be your insurance premium - likely in the form of a tax.But let’s not pretend this is an entirely new cost to the taxpayer - because the nation is already paying a heavy price.