Senate Committee Urges Better Long-Term Care For Women
WASHINGTON, Feb. 06-At a joint Senate hearing yesterday, 8 of the Senate’s 15 female senators called on the government to adopt better long-term health care policies for the nation’s growing population of aging women, including tax cuts for home health care providers, easier access to prescription drug coverage and expansion of current health care programs.
The bipartisan group of women senators appeared before a special meeting of the Senate Special Committee on Aging and the Aging Subcommittee of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to express concern for women who face economic and physical challenges because they are the primary caregivers for elderly or ailing family members or friends.
“Just because family care giving is unpaid does not mean it is costless,” said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. “These women suffer disproportionately from our [government’s] failure to develop a coherent, long-term financing system.”
Clinton was one of seven women senators who testified yesterday. The eighth senator in the group, Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., is a member of the Aging Subcommittee.
According to a 2001 report by the Older Women’s League, 75 percent of American women dedicate 18 hours of informal, or unpaid, care to seniors per week, on average.
As a result of this kind of emotional stress and physical demands, many of the senators said, full-time working women are at greater risk of health problems, especially since many of them are already in their middle to late fifties and living on a shoestring budget.
Improved legislation, however, could lessen the stress incurred by caregivers.
“Thanks to the vigorous advocacy of leaders like Sen. Mikulski and others, Congress passed the [National Family Caregiver Support Program],” Clinton said. “We should expand on the success of this program and on working on a bill to extend the concept of [it], which has worked so well for the elderly and other populations.”
In 2000, Congress instituted the program, which allocated $113 million to the states to provide services, including counseling and training support, so that families can maintain caregiving at home.
Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., a member of the Aging Subcommittee, said he agreed that more legislation needs to be examined, although he is “pleased” that the Family and Medical Leave Act has already given millions of care givers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave from their jobs each year to care for chronically sick or elderly family members. Dodd authored the 1993 legislation.
In addition to that law, Clinton said, the government should implement a joint state-federal program that would make long-term care more affordable and Medicaid’s available services more flexible and individualized for seniors.
Any Senate discussion of drafting or “retooling” health care legislation, Clinton warned, must be mindful of the nation’s current budgetary situation.
“Every option that we think would be needed for available health care is going to be harder to provide if we ยท see we are spending the Social Security and Medicare surpluses to pay for our operational expenses today,” she said of President George W. Bush’s recent multi-billion dollar proposed budget for the war on terrorism.
“Realistically, we are not going to be able to come up with the [long-term health care] options that we should if we don’t have the resources to provide that help,” she stated.
Dodd said that the decrease in female mortality rates-an American woman’s life expectancy is now 79 year-is especially important because baby boomers are quickly approaching their retirement years.
“By 2030, the number of those aged 65 and older will more than double to an astounding 70 million Americans,” Dodd said. “Recognizing this, the role of women as both care givers and recipients of long-term care services as they age themselves is a matter of great concern and I appreciate the opportunity to examine this critical issue.”
Dodd said that a recent study revealed that nearly or 382,000 Connecticut residents, or 15.2 percent of the population, are providing elder care in any given month.
Published in The Waterbury Republican-American, in Waterbury, Connecticut.
