The Star Tribune reports on young people with disabilities who are forced to live in nursing homes because of a dire shortage of home care workers across the state. Medical Assistance (the Medicaid program that funds most long-term care for Minnesotans with disabilities) pays only $12-$13 per hour for personal care assistants, which is simply not enough to attract people to a demanding profession with variable hours. The most obvious solution would be to increase the pay of these workers and disability advocates are working hard to convince the Legislature to do just that. The legislative session ends in a couple weeks, so if you’re in Minnesota, please consider calling your state legislators to ask them to support a pay increase for PCAs so that people with disabilities aren’t forced into lives of isolation.
Plenty of people with disabilities (including me) live with the nagging fear that we could end up in an institution because of a lack of adequate staffing. I’m fortunate to have a devoted team of nurses caring for me, but it would only take the sudden loss of a couple nurses for me to face the imminent possibility of life in a facility. Articles like this remind me both of how lucky I am to live at home and that my independence hangs by a tenuous thread. I’m also regretting that I read some of the nasty, dismissive comments that accompanied the article–Ayn Rand has no shortage of acolytes around here. I remain hopeful that lawmakers will recognize that they must act to preserve Minnesota’s position as a leader in supporting people with disabilities, but we need to make some noise to ensure this happens.