It’s Our Turn to Build a New System of Care

It’s been 60 years since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 
Medicaid and Medicare Act into legislation, and people applications have constructed a security web of look after American households. Sixty years since advocates, organizers, and households got here collectively and refused to let our nation abandon adults as they aged into poverty and low-income employees as they struggled to afford healthcare. However within the wake of the biggest reduce to Medicaid in historical past, that is no abnormal anniversary.

Today, nearly 80 million people rely on Medicaid for care. From protecting 40 p.c of all childbirths to almost 70 p.c of house look after older and disabled individuals, Medicaid is greater than a line merchandise. It has represented a promise that irrespective of the ups and downs of life, our potential to look after each other, from technology to technology, might be protected.

The $1 trillion in cuts included within the huge price range invoice signed into legislation in July, nonetheless, put look after 17 million individuals in danger. The caregivers, the direct care employees, the disabled and chronically sick, and the households juggling all of it will bear the brunt of the ache. This massive, ugly invoice tells us that our care, and our lives, are disposable.

The promise of Medicaid is being shattered. However within the wake of this devastation, the dream of one thing higher is coming into view. We’ve the possibility to form the longer term by constructing a system of care that leaves nobody behind. From healthcare to paid household and medical depart, from inexpensive, high quality childcare to ageing and incapacity care—a brand new system of care that displays the true realities and pressures on our households is lengthy overdue.

Even earlier than these cuts, these applications have been inadequate, underfunded, and inaccessible to far too many. Thousands and thousands of us have been already struggling to entry the care we’d like and deserve. Household caregivers, sandwiched between elevating a younger youngster and supporting ageing dad and mom, are buckling beneath the burden of the monetary and emotional price. Care employees are taking second and third jobs, as a result of they will’t afford to help their very own households on the poverty wages they earn. More than 700,000 eligible families are caught on ready lists for house care, and rural nursing houses are shuttering, with out the workforce mandatory to satisfy the demand.

With our present care system on the brink and look after hundreds of thousands hanging within the steadiness, the query of what comes subsequent is as much as us to reply. Now’s the time to construct towards a future the place nobody is left to navigate sickness, incapacity, ageing, or parenthood alone. A future the place households have the time and help they should look after each other with out sacrificing earnings or stability. A future the place care employees are supported and acknowledged as important, with good wages, robust protections, and dignity on the job. On this future, care will not be expendable; it’s prioritized as the muse of a thriving society.

However this future doesn’t come to us—we construct it, collectively.

Simply as generations earlier than us fought for a assure of healthcare and financial safety, delivering us Social Safety, Medicaid, Medicare, and the People With Disabilities Act, now it’s our flip. These applications didn’t simply occur; they have been constructed by individuals who dared to demand extra and arranged to make it actual. We should observe their lead and battle for extra than simply saving the naked minimal.

In late July, Caring Throughout Generations and our companions hosted tons of of households on the Nationwide Mall for 60 hours, holding a vigil to mark the 60 years since Medicaid was created. We got here collectively in our shared worry about what it means to lose Medicaid. We raised our voices to let our elected representatives know that we are going to not let their cruelty go unanswered. And we let our rage spark our dedication to make sure that the following 60 years of care are usually not like this.

We deserve insurance policies that allow us thrive. To get there, we’ve got to maintain coming collectively—not solely in moments of disaster, however in our on a regular basis lives. Every of us should decide to displaying up and organizing others to demand change.

Solely we will plant the seeds for what comes subsequent: a way forward for care value preventing for.