Why is caregiving so hard in America? The answers emerge in a new film : NPR

Caregiver Trace the story – and the unique challenges of – take care of family members in the United States in the documentary, viewers meet caregivers like Malcom Brown -Ekeogu, who now helps her husband, Kenneth, with even her most basic needs, such as walking and bath. “I never let her see me cry,” she said.

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For new people in family care, lack of resources and support is often a bitter surprise.

Many people who take care of a sick or elderly parent are shocked to discover that Medicare does not cover the cost of a nursing home or do not subsidize care at home – cleaning, driving and help for meals and dressing that so many families take place. Private health insurance does not pay either. The United States spends much less public money in long-term care than other rich nations.

Caregivers are alone – and according to AARP data, spend an average of $ 7,242 in its pocket each year. According to a recent report from the Ministry of Labor, they also lack an average of $ 43,500 in income due to requests for care for adults.

In the United States, the provision of care is largely a private affair rather than a public concern. Americans who deal with elderly or disabled adults strut of non -profit aid, community groups, church, friends and family – and even if there are 53 million, often feel intensely alone.

How did we get here?

Careging, A new documentary PBS Streaming online now (via PBS.org or the PBS application) and broadcast on June 24, trace how it happened and gives an idea of ​​why. In addition to the portraits of slices of families that take care today, it tells the last century through the objective of care, creating what director Chris Durrance calls “a history of care for America”.

Caregiver is broadcast on PBS on June 24. It is produced by Chris Durrance.

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The nation has long fought with the way of thinking about care, explains Durrance. Over the past one hundred years, we have seen both ambitious efforts to create public support nationally to care, and times when the care provision was considered a purely private case.

At the beginning of the 20th century, people with disabilities and the elderly who needed help were relegated to the Holsoves, who were public institutions of the last resort. These houses were overwhelmed by the wave of poverty during the great depression. In response, President Franklin Roosevelt and his team designed the country’s first security net in order to keep people at home.

Explore the Special NPR series on care, What is needed.

Caregiver Presentation of the secretary of the plowing of Roosevelt, Frances Perkins, architect of the unprecedented social security law of 1935. This social insurance program provided an income for older Americans, as well as unemployment insurance and programs to help children, elders and blinds.

But domestic workers – including caregivers – were not eligible to pay social security or receive its advantages. From this early date, the role was granted this second class status, as not quite a real job.

During the 1950s, rest houses and convalescence houses emerged, maintained by a new federal policy which enabled old age payments to go directly to private nursing homes. Between 1954 and 1965, the beds of nursing houses doubled.

In the 1960s, the legislation creating health insurance intentionally refused to cover long-term care provided by family caregivers or in nursing homes. The justification was that this treatment is not technically medical. But even at the time, the legislators feared that the cost of the coverage of long -term care did not make the Medicare program, as the law professor Sidney Watson tells in his examination of this story.

Medicaid, the sister program for low -income people, was designed to pay long -term care. And inadvertently made a boom of nursing homes. During the two years following the fact that the bill was adopted in 1965, government payments to nursing homes rose 600%. In the 1970s, stricter regulations concerning building codes and nursing staff favored large establishments, hospital environments and the first chains of nursing homes.

Frances Perkins was shown to President Franklin D. Roosevelt by saluting in 1943. Perkins was American secretary under Roosevelt from 1933 to 1945 and architect of the 1935 Social Security Act, which established federal support for elders, unemployed, children and those who are blind.

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These well -intentioned policies “have transformed what could have wanted to live in the community to live in the hospital,” said Watson, expert in health law at Saint Louis University School of Law. “Once you’ve done this, it’s hard to relax.” Indeed, even in 1988, 10% of the MEDICAID long -term care budget was paid to pay home care.

This is essentially there that things are still: Medicaid pays 60% of long -term stays in nursing homes, and there is little precious support for anyone who is not eligible.

The film also considers the laws of reforming the well -being of 1996 from the point of view of care, and it explores the failures of the Act respecting affordable care – which in fact included a provision for a national subsidized long -term care insurance program, quickly repealed as too expensive.

Viewers also meet activists who are now trying to overcome this ambivalence and develop a new era of care policy. There are signs that care is coming back into public conversation: President Joe Biden initially promised more funds and policies aimed at the caregivers of the Build Back Better Act, but the measures were ultimately deleted.

In 2024, the two presidential candidates proposed a tax credit to family caregivers; A bipartite bill now in the House would establish a federal tax credit of $ 5,000 per year.

Durrance also saw these signs. When the team announced the documentary project, he says, they were flooded by handwritten letters, emails and messages on LinkedIn, all of people who wanted to describe their own experiences and exhort the filmmakers to act.

“I have been in this business for a long time,” he said. “I have never experienced anything like it. It was a story that shouted to tell.”

Caregiver Being part of Well Beings, a Weta Washington, DC campaign, and was produced by Weta, Ark Media and Lea Pictures with Bradley Cooper as an executive producer.

Learn more about the film at well-being.orgwhere you can share your Clean online story and find Resources for caregivers.