看版上谈养老，华邮刚发表的：Senior care is crushingly expensive
babylye
楼主 (北美华人网)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/03/18/senior-care-costs-too-high/ Senior care is crushingly expensive. Boomers aren’t ready. Long-term care options are too expensive for middle-income Americans, narrowing options for millions of seniors
A wave of Americans has been reaching retirement age largely unprepared for the extraordinary costs of specialized care. These aging baby boomers — 73 million strong, the oldest of whom turn 77 this year — pose an unprecedented challenge to the U.S. economy, as individual families shoulder an increasingly ruinous financial burden with little help from stalemated policymakers in Washington.
The dilemma is particularly vexing for those in the economic middle. They can’t afford the high costs of care on their own, yet their resources are too high for them to qualify for federal safety-net insurance. An estimated 18 million middle-income boomers will require care for moderate to severe needs but be unable to pay for it, according to an analysis of the gap by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
“It’s this really enormous financial bomb sitting out there that most people are just hoping won’t hit them,” said Marc A. Cohen, co-director of the LeadingAge LTSS Center at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. “There’s an incredible amount of confusion and denial.”
It’s no surprise that people put off decisions about how to get by during the final years and decades of life; it’s unpleasant to consider, and in the United States, there are few good options. Home care aides are in short supply. Nursing homes are seen as overly institutional and cater to the most disabled.
A wave of Americans has been reaching retirement age largely unprepared for the extraordinary costs of specialized care. These aging baby boomers — 73 million strong, the oldest of whom turn 77 this year — pose an unprecedented challenge to the U.S. economy, as individual families shoulder an increasingly ruinous financial burden with little help from stalemated policymakers in Washington.
The dilemma is particularly vexing for those in the economic middle. They can’t afford the high costs of care on their own, yet their resources are too high for them to qualify for federal safety-net insurance. An estimated 18 million middle-income boomers will require care for moderate to severe needs but be unable to pay for it, according to an analysis of the gap by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
“It’s this really enormous financial bomb sitting out there that most people are just hoping won’t hit them,” said Marc A. Cohen, co-director of the LeadingAge LTSS Center at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. “There’s an incredible amount of confusion and denial.”
It’s no surprise that people put off decisions about how to get by during the final years and decades of life; it’s unpleasant to consider, and in the United States, there are few good options. Home care aides are in short supply. Nursing homes are seen as overly institutional and cater to the most disabled.