How did they get there in the first place

Subject: Care Homes. How did they get there in the first place.

One of the tragedies to have come to light in this period of the pandemic has been the lack of attention given to what has been going on in our old people's care homes and what appears to be a lack of attention by the government in issuing the protective clothing to limit the spread of the disease. It's been a scandal made even worse in trying to avoid those deaths from being accounted with the totals coming out of hospitals. A cover up of the people dying in these homes because it didn't fit the picture the government wished to present, that we were better off than some countries in Europe.
It's just another example of the parsimonious nature towards spending and Government planning for the future regarding the running of Old Age Homes.
Care homes used to be the province of the state. Homes were run by Municipalities and through the Municipality the State covered the full cost of old people's care whilst they were in the Home. Privatisation started, as did much else with the Thatcher doctrine of Market Forces being better at running everything and the cost of a person living in a Home now runs into many thousands and often requires the old person to sell their home to meet the cost. Thus at the end of their lives people are faced with an escalating cost and great monetary stress when at their most vulnerable. Frail, often suffering from dementia, society conveniently turns its back on their old people as we became more and more like our American cousins who's fascination with wealth and exceptionality leave huge swathes of their society left out in the cold with little or no protection. Today we have a care industry, for that is what it has become, which  identifies cost and the profit before the care, or that fundamental responsibility society owes its old people.
Of course it opens up a can of worms when we compare ourselves with other societies, especially the responsibility families can play when it comes to looking after a parent.
To hear the anger in the voices of family members who complain about not being able to visit their parent makes me ask "why is the parent in a home in the first place and not cared for in your own home". Many societies take care of their older family members who remain within the family unit until they die retaining their dignity by acknowledging them as the father or mother who  raised and protected their children through their formative years and see it as a duty to care when their parents get old.
We in the West, particularly that Anglo Saxon section of the West have shuffled off that duty and handed it over to the Care Home. We shy away from mixing our own, newly formed family with that other, fundamental family, our mom and dad. Asian families, Middle Eastern families, and religious groups such as the Muslims continue to support the extended family and few parents of those groups end up in Care Homes.
So when we throw our arms up in disgust at the death toll in the care homes perhaps we should first ask, how did they get there in the first place.