It Took a Woman
By Gail Sheehy
Mar 21, 2010
Obama has all the right instincts—but it took a fiercely focused female to really get it done. Gail Sheehy on a major victory for family caregivers.
Today is a victory for humanism. American style. Messy and mollycoddled as the process has been, the about-to-be health-care law finally accepts that basic affordable health care is a human right.
I can almost hear an oceanic sigh of relief from members of the Sandwich Generation. Even before the Great Recession, middle-class parents were falling into debt, squeezed between keeping their children on their payroll well beyond college and spending out-of-pocket to care for their long-living, chronically ill parents.
Nearly 50 million adults are now working as unpaid, unsubsidized family caregivers for aging parents or spouses or siblings. This is the silent reality inside one-third of American households.
Many of these primary caregivers lose or forfeit their jobs to perform this noble role and lose their own health insurance and financial security in the bargain. They tiptoe around a sinkhole, praying their kids don't get sick and they don't get a devastating diagnosis requiring treatment that will drive them into bankruptcy.
The new law does have a caregiver benefit. It's funded with peanuts—$102.5 million—to support adult children taking care of elderly relatives at home. But it's a start, and with Joe Biden behind it, you can bet there will be more noise in Congress.
SOURCE: Yahoo News
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