How unpaid carers “pay” the costs of dementia

Our recent “Dementia UK” 2014 report for the Alzheimer’s Society, in collaboration with King’s College London suggests that two-thirds of our estimated £26.3 billion cost of dementia in the UK is shouldered by carers and people with dementia. These results, which are also discussed in Martin Knapp’s recent blog post have been reported widely in the media as a “dementia tax”, and contrasted with the fact that most of the care needed by people diagnosed with conditions such as cancer is funded publicly through the NHS.