The senior population is booming. Caregiving is struggling to keep up
cnbc.com42 points by toomuchtodo 2 hours ago
42 points by toomuchtodo 2 hours ago
For 10yrs, I supported 1-3 agencies that owned/ran group homes for developmentally disabled adults.
These included homes for clients who were non-ambulatory, clients who had profound health issues and one home for dd-so. Besides living and healthcare expenses, the agencies had regulatory overhead imposed by 3 different governing agencies.
Even with all of this, the clients had lives with daily offsite activities, jobs, public events, theme parks, etc.
The per-client budgets of these group homes were tiny compared to nursing homes. They were funded by client SS disability payments, supplemented by some modest public funding.
These homes where founded and administered by boards made up of the client's families. Importantly, they were non-profit; they lacked the massive overhead that comes with shareholder obligations and executive salaries+perks.
They've been providing superior care for over 4 decades. After I left, they began to experience a persistent risk of funding cuts. These were driven by a major hospital chain executive who became governor and then state senator.
So why are nursing homes so expensive?
Baumol effect. TVs[1] are unrealistically cheap. This means that more money is chasing less automatable services. There is no technology that makes caregiving 100x more labor efficient. More money chasing the same supply means prices rise until demand reaches equilibrium. No amount of deregulation can increase the labor efficiency of caregiving to match gains in goods production.
2. And other goods mass manufactured.
The most visible difference is nursing homes are owned by publicly traded entities, who come with massive overhead of shareholder obligations and executive salaries.
Publicly traded entities which are components of many pension funds. The boomers essentially took out a loan against themselves, and now it's due, with interest to boot.
There's some schadenfreude seeing the boomers complain about getting the enshittification treatment they themselves got rich off.
> Publicly traded entities which are components of many pension funds.
A shareholder relationship is parasitical and exploitive by it's nature, as defined by Dodge Brothers v. Ford.
Making pension funds feed on that relationship - that is whatever that is. I couldn't call it a necessary evil because it's by design.
labor cost, which is high because of high housing costs and other jobs that provide good pay competing with nursing home jobs
"Line must go up".
The same line boomers enjoyed riding on while their property and other investments went up massively without any effort on their part, at the expense of subsequent generations.
Now, they're getting a taste of their own medicine as someone else (private equity in this case) wants to ride the line going up and even just robbing subsequent generations isn't enough to pay for it.
Certainly privately owned ones skim a lot off the top to pay shareholders and bonuses, but the reality is that the cost of caregiving is almost entirely labor and rent, and those things do not benefit from efficiency gains, so the cost of service just goes up forever because of Baumol's cost disease.
Realistically the only way to stabilize the price of caregiving is to automate the hell out of it, like Japan is trying to do. It's a rather dystopian thought that the only way senior care won't bankrupt us is if we have robots do it all, but what can you do.
The Baumol effect is only one component and not the entire story. Those that run these services will extract as many profits as possible for themselves. When the robots will manage geriatric care, there is no reason to not continue exploiting their wallets.
“It’s not rocket science — you’ve either got to pay more, or you’ve got to let in way more people. … There are wonderful, caring people all over the world who would like to come care for our seniors at the wages we’re willing to pay, and we just have to let them in,” Gruber said.
This is the crux of it. The government should also subsidize and directly administer more senior care, especially given the economic drag from having family members step into these roles
The government actively tries to block any attempt. After two father deaths and now my mother in elderly care, it’s a damned nightmare. They have means but can’t make decisions. They get easily confused. I could go on but my sister and I basically have badges at the facility because of their short staff. We have real jobs this takes away from.
Time to train up a generation to enter this field and then have them be out of work in 30 years when the demographics flip. Tale as old as time.
There is a Melbourne start-up called Andromeda, which makes playful robots for the elderly. https://andromedarobotics.ai/
I always thought this would be a market Japan would dominate with their aging population and early development in robotics, but I don't think I'm seeing that.
With the pace things are developing at, I would not be surprised at all to be surrounded by robots in old age and when I pass.
For general interest:
The award-winning ABC series ‘Old People’s Home for 4Year Olds’ and 'Old People's Home for Teenagers' were not only heart-warming shows. A new Griffith University study found the series have been instrumental in public recognition of the social and health benefits of intergenerational practice.
~ https://iview.abc.net.au/show/old-people-s-home-for-4-year-o...
There's a lot I can say about older populations and their abilities despite being old, right now I'm have to step out for the day for several hours, possibly more, so I'll just leave this one approach above that's been tried and works well.
Also, the elder population aren't homogenous by any means, there are a good number that can assist others with meals, gardens, etc.