Aging Boomers Face a Shortage of Caregivers

by Lauren
(Royersford, PA)

Lisa Gibbs from MONEY Magazine wrote a great blog post titled Aging boomers face caregiver shortage.

She begins her blog post with a mention of the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act, a provision in the health care debates to create a national long-term care insurance program that would allow people to pay an average $65 a month and, after five years, be eligible for between $50 to $100 a day in benefits.

In Lisa's words:

"While $100 is better than nothing, I can tell you from experience that it doesn’t cover very much. It would pay for about six hours of daily care from the home aides I hired recently to help my mother recover from surgery. It certainly wouldn't cover assisted living or nursing homes, which run into the tens of thousands of dollars per year.Whether through private long-term care insurance or a public plan, it’s clear this country needs to do a better job thinking about how we’re going to care for ourselves (and our parents) as we get older and frailer. Few of us have saved enough money or bought insurance to cover whatever care we need in our later years. But there's another aspect of the long-term care problem that people have overlooked: A looming "caregiver crunch," in the words of Ken Dychtwald, a gerontologist and president of the consultancy Age Wave.".

Lisa nails it. She is absolutely right.