Shah: Washington keeps failing America’s caregivers

Washington has a caregiving challenge And I don t mean the million Americans in predicament providing unpaid care to aging relatives I mean Washington s chronic inability to do anything about it Multiple caregiving bills sit in committee purgatory languishing for years The RAISE Family Care providers Act was passed in establishing a national strategy to help family care providers but it did not provide funding The Credit for Caring Act providing a modest tax credit for caregiving expenses has been reintroduced session after session with no movement The lifespan respite care undertaking receives million annually enough to serve of family support workers Meanwhile the caregiving dilemma has exploded nationwide AARP s description shows that caregiving surged by million people in a decade representing a increase The average weekly caregiving time has tripled since from nine to hours By older adults are expected to outnumber children for the first time in U S history And what has Washington s response been Thoughts prayers and National Family Care providers Month I ve watched this failure from multiple vantage points As someone who cared for my wife through cancer after caring for my grandfather through dementia I know the impossible math of caregiving As founder of CareYaya one of America s largest caregiving platforms and a researcher leading NIH-funded studies on caregiver training I see how federal framework failures cascade into chaos for families The political dysfunction is bipartisan and equally maddening Republicans block any meaningful assets in respite care training programs or workforce growth Democrats propose expansive programs such as universal paid leave that aren t budget-conscious and often go nowhere Both parties miss what s sitting right in front of them Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy got it right in his advisory which positioned caregiver burnout as a national inhabitants healthcare exigency When care providers are depressed or fatigued there s a increase in urgency room use and nearly in additional curative costs per individual We re hemorrhaging billions in preventable healthcare spending because we refuse to invest in caregiver assistance The key isn t more establishment programs It s recognizing an existing care workforce and treating them like professionals Research shows that more than of family assistants are interested in training to work professionally caring for patients in other households We can create a workforce maturation pathway for millions of Americans who already do this work want professional credentials and could fill America s healthcare workforce shortage It s the infrastructure bill model applied to human infrastructure create federal funding for caregiver training and credentialing partner with society colleges for certification programs provide professional pathways and let Medicare and Medicaid reimburse for trained family supporters The economic circumstance is overwhelming We spend trillion annually on healthcare but family support workers provide billion in unpaid care We re running a healthcare system that depends on extracting free labor from families until they collapse The political matter should be equally obvious Caregiving is a rare issue with an actual bipartisan constituency red states and blue states are similarly affected So why does nothing happen Because caregiving falls between every committee s jurisdiction It s robustness guidelines but also labor approach family initiative and aging program It s everyone s difficulty and no one s priority Meanwhile the demographic wave approaches By the caregiver assistance ratio of middle-age people in society to promotion every older adult drops from to just The system that s already failing will face impossible demands During National Family Family members Month November both parties will issue statements celebrating support workers sacrifices host events and use the word hero a lot Then they ll return to D C and do exactly nothing Here s a radically different idea instead of celebrating family members sacrifices let s reconsider the expectations placed on them Fund training programs Create professional pathways Recognize care work as real work The legislative motorcycle doesn t matter reconciliation stand-alone bills whatever However the window is closing In when older adults outnumber children for the first time Washington will have two choices point to a caregiving workforce we invested in and professionalized or point fingers at each other while families drown Right now we re on track for the latter And million Americans are paying the price for our dysfunction Neal K Shah is a healthcare researcher specializing in workforce innovation and AI-enabled caregiver training InsideSources