“Having built a 40-year career as a care manager to older adults, my first reaction to this news was sheer jubilation. It’s about time we as a nation acknowledged the critical importance of caring for adults in their fragile years to both the economy and the fabric of our society. Once I’d come back down to earth, I began to wonder: In what other ways might a $400 billion investment be used to jumpstart the sort of fundamental change our eldercare system so desperately needs?

“As everyone knows, the coronavirus hit nursing homes and other long-term care facilities the hardest. Their residents constitute less than 1 percent of the U.S. population yet accounted for at least 32 percent of all COVID-19 deaths. To date,182,000 COVID fatalities occurred in long-term care facilities, residents and staff combined. What seemed minor by comparison was the emotional blow for families unable to visit their loved ones in nursing homes.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg of the nursing home dilemma … ”

Continue reading this article in its entirety at The Hill, click here.