Milken Institute Report Links Medicaid Cuts to Family Caregiver Strain
In a report published by Home Health Care News, the Milken Institute's Future of Aging and Longevity team released "A Decade of Progress, A Decade to Act," arguing that caregiver workforce shortages and Medicaid cuts are shifting home-based care burdens onto families. Milken managing director Diane Ty said labor shortages, worsened by immigration enforcement, mean even families who can afford paid caregivers often cannot find them, forcing relatives to reduce work hours or leave jobs, with consequences for retirement savings and Social Security benefits. An essay by SCAN Foundation's Sarita Mohanty and Kaiser Permanente's Kapil Dhingra calls for treating aging care as public infrastructure, citing PACE as a model, and urges payment frameworks that reward whole-person outcomes and better data sharing. The report also highlights roughly 4 million U.S. children under 18 serving as family caregivers.