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Senator Herbert Kohl

The Retooling the Health Care Workforce for an Aging America Act, originally introduced by Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), chairman of the Special Committee on Aging, has picked up two new sponsors in the Senate — Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Bob Casey (D-PA), and a lead sponsor in the House of Representatives — Jan Schakowsky (D-IL).

The bill aims to address the impending shortage of health care workers who are adequately trained and prepared to care for older Americans and incorporates major recommendations put forth in an Institute of Medicine report released in April 2008. Read the full story

Wall Street Journal's Rundown of LTC Cuts

Health care stakeholders hoped this week the lame-duck session of Congress would examine a stimulus package that includes an increase to the federal medical assistance percentage (FMAP), the federal matching funds that states receive to fund their Medicaid programs.

Many states, such as New York, are threatening to cut Medicaid to make up for budget shortfalls.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal story, at least 15 states, including Alabama, Virginia and Massachusetts, are targeting funding for programs that allow low-income direct-care consumers to receive personal care in their own homes.

The story says the cutbacks are exacerbating the already long waiting lists for home-care support services in many states. With forced reductions due to state budget shortfalls, the low-income elderly and disabled may be forced into nursing homes.

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“Every day, my family and countless others trust direct care staff to care for our loved ones. Yet we pay them less than we pay many of the college students brewing skinny lattes at Starbucks. Meager staff pay and benefits are the shameful back story of the generally positive effort to move intellectually-disabled people out of state institutions into the community. Starting hourly wages for direct care workers are typically a dollar or two above minimum wage,” says a piece in the widely read Huffington Post. The posting calls for paying direct-care workers “a living wage.”

In Think You Need a Raise? Caregivers for the Disabled Need One More Than You Do, Harold Pollack talks about Rayshawn, a direct-care worker at his brother’s group home in Chicago who, he says, his brother is “crazy about.”

Rayshawn and most of his colleagues, Pollack points out, are paid through Medicaid, “a program that bleeds red ink in just about every state. Our Governor’s proposed FY2009 budget again includes no cost of living adjustment for these workers. Nothing new or surprising there. Politicians are rewarded by powerful constituencies for good provided…. Direct care workers are not a powerful constituency, and they are pretty invisible to most voters.”

Elise Nakhnikian, Senior Online Editor
enakhnikian@phinational.org

“The client looks forward to this. This makes their life a little more easy. Not easy just physically, but mentally and spiritually also,” says Chicago home care worker Muriel Jones in an online slide show of a typical day in her work life. “You being there kind of uplifts them, because they know somebody is coming every day or every other day, paying them attention.”

The beautiful pictures of Jones at work, which were taken by photojournalist Earl Dotter, are accompanied by a voiceover in which she talks about what she does and what it means to her clients.

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