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As baby boomers begin to consider senior living options, the burdens of senior healthcare will fall upon working millennials and Gen X, who will be raising their children and working one or two jobs while also caring for their aging parents. It’s a burden that will present unique challenges to Americans today and in the years ahead.
Straight Arrow News contributor Jordan Reid is particularly concerned about the high cost of most senior healthcare options, combined with the lack of public healthcare and the strict limitations of both Medicaid and Medicare. The increasing financial burden of senior care, Reid notes, looks even more impossible for working-age Americans to cover once you overlap those with the rising costs of childcare.
I’ve spoken here many times on the childcare crisis in our country, and about the burden that it places on caregivers, and especially on women who tend to take on the bulk of that work. But today, I’m going to talk about an issue at the opposite end of the spectrum, and that is — eldercare.
Baby boomers are aging, and their midlife children … we’re soon going to start being presented with the need to care for this population of parents, often while simultaneously caring for our own young children, and often while also working full-time at jobs that rarely provide paid leave, which is impossible for anyone without limitless resources.
In 2030, there will be more United States residents over the age of 65 than children. We’re about to have a huge population of people requiring complex ongoing care. And yet policymakers don’t seem to view this as a pressing issue. Medicare doesn’t cover most long-term care. Medicaid requires applicants to have next to no assets in order to be eligible, which cuts out a lot of lower- and middle-income people.
