The Senior Population Is Booming. Caregiving Is Struggling to Keep Up

For 10yrs, I supported 1-3 agencies that owned/ran group homes for developmentally disabled adults.

These included homes for clients who were non-ambulatory, clients who had profound health issues and one home for dd-so. Besides living and healthcare expenses, the agencies had regulatory overhead imposed by 3 different governing agencies.

Even with all of this, the clients had lives with daily offsite activities, jobs, public events, theme parks, etc.

The per-client budgets of these group homes were tiny compared to nursing homes. They were funded by client SS disability payments, supplemented by some modest public funding.

These homes where founded and administered by boards made up of the client's families. Importantly, they were non-profit; they lacked the massive overhead that comes with shareholder obligations and executive salaries+perks.

They've been providing superior care for over 4 decades. After I left, they began to experience a persistent risk of funding cuts. These were driven by a major hospital chain executive who became governor and then state senator.

For general interest:

  The award-winning ABC series ‘Old People’s Home for 4Year Olds’ and 'Old People's Home for Teenagers' were not only heart-warming shows. A new Griffith University study found the series have been instrumental in public recognition of the social and health benefits of intergenerational practice.

~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRlgQ8bVV1o

~ https://iview.abc.net.au/show/old-people-s-home-for-4-year-o...

There's a lot I can say about older populations and their abilities despite being old, right now I'm have to step out for the day for several hours, possibly more, so I'll just leave this one approach above that's been tried and works well.

Also, the elder population aren't homogenous by any means, there are a good number that can assist others with meals, gardens, etc.

There is a Melbourne start-up called Andromeda, which makes playful robots for the elderly. https://andromedarobotics.ai/

I always thought this would be a market Japan would dominate with their aging population and early development in robotics, but I don't think I'm seeing that.

“It’s not rocket science — you’ve either got to pay more, or you’ve got to let in way more people. … There are wonderful, caring people all over the world who would like to come care for our seniors at the wages we’re willing to pay, and we just have to let them in,” Gruber said.

This is the crux of it. The government should also subsidize and directly administer more senior care, especially given the economic drag from having family members step into these roles

Time to train up a generation to enter this field and then have them be out of work in 30 years when the demographics flip. Tale as old as time.

Medicare (US) doesn't cover skilled nursing or long-term care. Medicaid did cover LTC for means-tested individuals, but a significant fraction of that is going away after the midterms to give tax breaks to billionaires. It's going to be a shitshow beyond 2026 and it's only going to get Gilded Age 2.0 worse with massive increasing numbers of elderly homeless people from here on out. Denying healthcare and care is going to kill a lot of people.