Prime Minister Gordon Brown is outlining the need to reform social care for Britain's ageing population.
He says that without radical reform, the care system in England alone faces a Ј6bn shortfall within 20 years.
His speech begins a six-month public consultation focused on making care services fairer and affordable.
It comes after a weekend dominated by memoirs from Cherie Blair, John Prescott and Lord Levy focusing on his relationship with Tony Blair.
Those memoirs added further pressure on the prime minister as he seeks to regain the political initiative after poor local election results.
Mr Brown's speech, to the King's Fund in London, comes as forecasters say that in the next two decades a quarter of the UK's adult population will be over 65 and the number of people over 85 will have doubled.
Selling homes
Growth in the number of elderly and disabled people with care and support needs is expected to put huge pressure on services and the benefits system.
Speaking to charities, NHS workers, trade unions and local government leaders, Mr Brown said that the current means-tested system could seem unfair.
He said he understood the anxieties of families who fear having to sell their own homes to pay for long-term care, and of losing assets they would otherwise have passed onto family or friends.
To combat this, he suggested ideas including better collaboration between health and social services, and helping people to save for their old age while protecting their homes and inheritance.
He also said he wanted care to be more responsive to demands for independence and it must be made easier for people to stay in their own homes.
"This is an issue at the heart of our ambition to create a fairer Britain. Of course, helping relatives is a challenge that most families rise to - however difficult it becomes," he said.
"But that doesn't make it any easier. Nor does it remove family worries about providing physical care that is needed - or take away people's concerns that at some point in the future they may have to sell a treasured home to pay for their own care.
"It is essential that in future there is fairness for those who work hard and save for their retirement."
Health Secretary Alan Johnson said there were no easy or pre-conceived answers and that it would be a "proper debate" with no pre-determined answers and a green paper to follow.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today the current system was "inadequate" and he did not want to leave the problem to future governments.
To coincide with the launch of the social care consultation, Mr Johnson announced a Ј31m pilot scheme trialling new technologies to monitor people's health.
The technology will be tested by people with diabetes or heart and chest problems and the elderly in Kent, Cornwall and east London.
It monitors any lifestyle changes and can transmit information from a patient at home to a doctor if they display any worrying signs.
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(BBC)
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