Early in the presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton proposed a package of ideas aimed at helping adult children who care for aging parents and other relatives. Yesterday, Donald Trump embraced a similar idea. Family caregiving, it seems, is going mainstream. It is striking that both Clinton and Trump are talking about an issue that until now has flown far below the [...]
For the first time, both major political parties have explicitly recognized in their platforms the need for community-based long-term care. While the Democratic and Republican platforms included few specific recommendations, the fact that they acknowledged the importance of personal assistance and social supports for older adults (and in the Democrats’ case, for younger people with disabilities) is a significant step [...]
How much would it cost if government pays for all long-term care? About $4 trillion over the next decade. We know because Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has proposed to do just that, as part of his ambitious Medicare-for-all health insurance program. And, in an effort to calculate the overall cost of Sanders’s domestic policy agenda, a group of my [...]
For the first time in years, maybe for the first time ever, a major presidential candidate has put family caregiving on the political front-burner. Over the weekend, Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton proposed a package of ideas aimed at assisting those who are caring for aging parents or other family members. Her ideas are modest and won’t provide the level [...]
Here is a political mystery: At least 44 million Americans are caring for aging parents or other relatives and friends. That’s more than one of every six adults in the US—an enormous voting block. Yet, their interests are largely ignored both in Washington and in state capitals. Now, the Altarum Institute, a non-partisan, Washington-based research organization, has come up with [...]