All over Nevada, thousands of families with aging parents are coming to a shocking realization. They are making the worrying discovery that home care is not covered by Medicare or almost any private health insurance.
Most people are not aware that currently, long-term home care services are provided through either Medicaid for low-income individuals or through private-pay agencies, which can be extremely expensive. The vast majority of Nevadans are caught in the middle with no affordable home care options. Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz have listened to working families and proposed to solve this crisis by expanding Medicare to cover home care services.
This historic and transformative plan would not only ensure all seniors have the ability to live in their own homes with dignity, but would also provide financial relief to families and boost our economy.
A "silver tsunami" is crashing over the Silver State, which is aging faster than the rest of the country. Nevada's older population exploded by 46% in the past decade and we now have almost half a million senior residents.
Most older adults would strongly prefer to age in their own homes and stay connected to their communities. That has created skyrocketing demand for home care services, which include help with bathing, cooking, picking up prescriptions, laundry, grocery shopping and cleaning.
Unfortunately, Medicare only covers short-term home care, typically when someone leaves the hospital to recover from surgery. That too often means family members are left to struggle with the burden of caring for aging parents while holding down a job and caring for children.
More than 100 million Americans provide unpaid care for parents, kids or both. As any caregiver knows, this can take a heavy toll financially, physically and emotionally, and stretch families to the absolute breaking point. Many family caregivers face the impossible choice of whether to walk away from a successful career or substantially reduce their income to take care of loved ones in need.
Harris understands what it's like to care for a parent -- her aging mother -- while working. Under Harris and Walz's plan, Medicare would offer long-term home care services for every senior and person with disabilities who needs it, with higher-income individuals contributing on a sliding scale.
The Harris-Walz plan would also cover hearing aids, eyeglasses and associated exams under Medicare for the first time ever, an extremely popular proposal. Being able to see and hear is essential for seniors to remain living independently and avoid falls.
Expanding home care services is fiscally responsible policy, because caring for seniors in their own homes requires much less overhead than costly nursing homes and also prevents unnecessary hospitalizations. The proposal would help drive economic growth by giving family members greater freedom to re-enter the workforce and earn more financial security.
There's also a plan to pay for it -- by strengthening Medicare's ability to negotiate lower drug prices with big pharmaceutical companies, as well as taxing large corporations that ship American jobs overseas.
In stark contrast to Harris' plan to support working families, Donald Trump has consistently tried to undermine them. Every single one of his proposed budgets when he was president contained severe cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. And he's repeatedly stated that he's looking for ways to cut seniors' benefits in the future. At the same time that Trump has been threatening these cuts, billionaires like himself have become over $2 trillion richer as a result of his tax law, which heavily favored the ultra-wealthy.
This election is the most consequential of our lives and the life of our nation. Nevadans live in one of the most important swing states in the country and our votes are pivotal to deciding the next president. On one hand, there is Trump, who will make the crisis facing seniors much worse by cutting Medicare so he can pass more giveaways to the rich. On the other, we have Harris and Walz, who empathize with the struggles of working families and have concrete proposals to promote Americans' well-being and economic security.
Our choice is clear.
Steven Horsford represents Nevada's 4th district and is a father of three. Regina Brown-Ross is a home care worker and has supported seniors and people with disabilities throughout Las Vegas for the past six years. She is a member leader of her union, SEIU Local 1107.