A care sector leader has compared a dementia care cost "inequality" to refusing to treat a child with cancer on the NHS.
Donald Macaskill, Chief Executive of Scottish Care, said it was "moral outrage" that 10,000 Scots with advanced dementia were paying for healthcare that would be free if they any other terminal illness.
The £50million so-called "dementia tax" arises because their end-of-life needs are assessed as social care rather than healthcare.
Mr Macaskill described this as a "stain on Scotland's political and policy landscape" and criticised the SNP government for inaction to address it.
The Scottish Government is due to unveil a blueprint for the new National Care Service.
Mr Macaskill said promises of new elderly healthcare strategies would be "straws in the wind" in a system "resistant to ending this discrimination".
He said: "It is well past time for the blatant discriminatory treatment of dementia and those who live with it to be called out as a stain upon the fabric of our collective Scottish political, and policy landscape.
READ MORE: SNP accused of breaking pre-election pledge to tackle 'dementia tax'
"To live in Scotland today with dementia is to be marginalised, diminished, and ignored.
"It is over 3 years since I sat in a room with others and heard the former
First Minster Henry McLeish launch a robust and rigorous academic and practice report calling for urgent change in the support of those with advanced dementia.
"And yet just last week Mr McLeish was writing and talking about the failure to move more than a snails pace in progress towards meeting the urgent asks of three years ago.
"The truth of dementia in today’s Scotland is of a diminishing focus and appetite for the radical and significant change that is required.
"This is plain and simply an issue of human rights.
READ MORE: 'World first' dementia study offers prevention hopes
"There would be a huge popular outcry if we decided that a child who develops cancer should not be treated free at the point of care by the State but we are doing precisely that by refusing to recognise that someone in advanced neurological decline has primarily health needs and only secondarily social care requirements."
He said a failure to tackle the problem was 'riven with age discrimination' and suggested there may be a gender bias at play because the majority of people living with the condition are women.
Alzheimer Scotland has led a campaign calling for fairer care fees for people living with advanced dementia, which is backed by The Herald and has suggested a more personalised approach to care assessments.
Mr MacAskill made his comments in a blog to mark national Dementia Awareness Week.
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said free personal care and nursing contributions had been increased above inflation for the last two consecutive years. A new framework will be published this month "which aim to fully integrating the health and social care system that wraps around care homes."
Social Care Minister Kevin Stewart added: “Adults who have been assessed as requiring personal care do not pay for this service, regardless of their condition or means. Nursing care is also of course free at the point of delivery.
“Everybody in a care home, regardless of condition or whether publically funded or self-funded, will pay a contribution towards their residential costs.
“The amount that they pay will be based on their individual financial circumstances.”
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