As the nation’s population ages, the need for more care workers and safer, more affordable care options is urgent.
By 2050, the number of individuals in need of long-term care services will likely double from 13 million in 2000 to over 27 million people.
To address the growing demand, President Biden has earmarked $400 billion of his $2 trillion jobs plan to expand access to quality, affordable home or community-based care for aging and disabled Americans.
“Even before Covid-19, our country was in the midst of a caregiving crisis,” notes a Biden administration fact sheet on the plan. “These investments will help hundreds of thousands of Americans finally obtain the long-term services and support they need, while creating new jobs and offering caregiving workers a long-overdue raise, stronger benefits, and an opportunity to organize or join a union and collectively bargain.”
Specifically, President Biden’s plan would expand access to long-term, home-based care services under Medicaid, in addition to providing a $5,000 tax credit for family caregivers.
This will allow millions of people who need care to stay in their homes and avoid unnecessary placements in nursing homes — over 70 percent of which are for-profit and owned by private investors.
New analysis from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that between 2004 and 2016, private equity ownership of nursing homes increased the mortality rate of residents by 10 percent compared to those living in homes with other ownership structures, suggesting that more than 20,000 people died as a consequence of living in nursing homes run by private equity firms during this period.
The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the risks of the for-profit model for vulnerable nursing home residents and employees.
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that throughout the pandemic, for-profit nursing homes had lower supplies of personal protective equipment for their workers when compared to other types of nursing homes.
In New Jersey, the state with the highest nursing home death rates during the pandemic, for-profit nursing homes had infection rates 24.5 percent higher than the statewide nursing home average and death rates more than 10.2 percent higher.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
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