Caregivers & Home Care Funding

You may recall that the President proposed an increase in home care funding. But, Biden’s pledge to boost home caregiver funding excluded from infrastructure deal.

Because the federal government does not require states to provide these benefits for all those who qualify, nearly 820,000 older or disabled Americans were on state waitlists for Medicaid’s home- and community-based services in 2018, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study published last year. Many rely on family members for their most basic needs, including bathing, getting dressed and taking medication. Without outside help, their family members often struggle to balance caregiving with work and face the enormous challenge of keeping their loved ones safe.

Amid the growing need, President Joe Biden vowed to eliminate these waiting lists during his campaign and originally proposed to inject $400 billion into these programs through the massive infrastructure bill currently under debate in Congress. Republicans, however, have blasted the effort to include “human infrastructure” in the bill, and Democratic leaders excluded the funding from the deal that the White House struck on Thursday with a bipartisan group of senators. Biden has pledged to pursue money for caregiving in a separate, far larger bill that could potentially pass with Democratic votes alone, but that is far from guaranteed.

The need is great and the wait is long, according to the article.

Without greater support, the number of vulnerable Americans who can’t access paid care at home will continue to rise, experts and advocates say, given the aging population, pandemic-fueled fears of nursing homes, and a growing shortage of workers, deterred by Medicaid’s low pay rates and tough working conditions. That means more families could be left scrambling to patch together care for their loved ones at home, not knowing if their number on the waiting list will come up or if they will be able to receive care when it does.

Add into the mix worker shortages and we are facing a critical situation.  Although not included in the infrastructure bill,   Democrats on Thursday introduced a bill “to expand eligibility and access to Medicaid home- and community-based services, helping states reduce waitlists and increasing pay and benefits for home health workers. Democrats can pass certain spending bills without Republican votes, but would need support from every member of their razor-thin Senate majority, and 10 Democratic senators have yet to sign on to the new home care bill.”

Stay tuned.