Looking forward to the following Administration and Congress, the applications older adults depend on will probably be on the crux of coverage debates and discussions. Older adults and their advocates have to be prepared to interact in order that any selections which might be made are serving to us to construct the longer term for growing old that we envision.
Justice in Growing older’s imaginative and prescient for growing old in America is that each one of us have the chance to age with dignity, no matter monetary circumstances—free from the fear, hurt, and injustice brought on by lack of well being care, meals, or a secure place to sleep. We imagine that we should always all be capable of entry the assets, providers, and applications we have to thrive as we get older, regardless of our monetary circumstances, the place we come from, our race, gender, gender identification, sexual orientation, capacity, or language.
Older adults anchor our households and communities and join our households by the generations. However after working all their lives, almost half of our nation’s older adults residing alone wrestle to pay for meals, lease, and medical care, and depend on Social Safety, SSI, Medicare and Medicaid to outlive.
As Congress and the following administration gear as much as think about extending tax cuts in 2025, Justice in Growing older is concentrated on how any proposed coverage modifications will have an effect on low-income older adults recognizing that each one of us profit when older adults and their households can entry Medicare, Medicaid, Social Safety, SSI, housing, and elder rights applications, with out discrimination. Listed here are 4 areas the place older adults want our advocacy.
1. Safeguard and Promote Entry to Well being and Lengthy-Time period Care
The Medicare and Medicaid applications are essential for older adults, folks with disabilities, and their households. 67 million persons are enrolled in Medicare, with 12.5 million enrolled in each Medicare and Medicaid. We’ll proceed to make sure everybody can entry the excellent, top quality, inexpensive well being and long-term care we have to age in dignity. If lawmakers search to cut back funding for applications, prohibit eligibility for Medicare and Medicaid or restrict the kind or scope of providers accessible, we might want to work collectively to cease them.
Too many older adults shouldn’t have entry to the assist they should reside independently of their houses and communities. Two out of 5 older adults dealing with challenges with day by day actions obtain no help, and roughly one-third of low-income folks dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid don’t obtain the assistance they want.
Our work goals to strengthen and broaden entry to long-term care in Medicare and Medicaid so older adults can age of their houses and communities and be certain that nursing amenities present top quality care and dignity for residents. If lawmakers search to cut back entry to residence care or endanger nursing facility residents, all of us who care about older adults and their households should oppose these modifications.
2. Defend Social Safety and SSI
Social Safety and Supplemental Safety Revenue (SSI) are the spine of financial safety for older adults, lifting over 16.5 million older adults out of poverty. With almost 5 million older People residing on lower than $1,000 a month, these applications are essential. We’ll proceed our work to enhance them and make advantages simpler to entry.
All of us should look ahead to and oppose proposals that undermine the effectiveness of Social Safety for low-income older adults, whether or not by altering how advantages are calculated, elevating the retirement age, or implementing tax cuts that may jeopardize the applications’ general monetary stability.
Supplemental Safety Revenue (SSI) is an important program for low-income older adults and folks with disabilities who should not capable of work sufficient to make ends meet. Nevertheless, its outdated guidelines and necessities exclude lots of the folks it’s supposed to assist.
We’ll proceed our combat to extend the useful resource restrict, which hasn’t been modified in 30 years and has bipartisan assist. Efforts that may block grant or in any other case lower the assist supplied to SSI recipients must be off the desk.
3. Stop and Finish Older Grownup Homelessness
No matter financial standing or the place we reside, we should always all be capable of reside and age in accessible, inexpensive, and age-friendly housing in our communities. But, older adults are the quickest rising age group experiencing homelessness. Nationally, nearly one in three older renter households pays greater than half of their month-to-month revenue in lease, leaving them only one shock medical invoice away from being pushed into the streets.
We’ll work to make sure housing helps can be found to deal with older grownup homelessness, so older adults can have the housing stability they want and a spot to obtain residence care. Decreasing federal housing applications and helps would hurt older adults with the best financial wants.
4. Guarantee All of Us Have the Proper to Age with Dignity and Justice
All of us are growing old, and all of us have a stake in how older adults reside and thrive in our households and communities. The Biden-Harris Administration handed guidelines that defend older adults from discrimination and guarantee entry to providers. These essential guidelines, such because the Well being Care Rights Rule (Sec. 1557), the Nondiscrimination in Well being Care on the Foundation of Incapacity Rule (Sec. 504), the Medicaid Entry Rule, and Nursing Facility Staffing Guidelines, are beneath assault by litigation and could also be topic to rollbacks.
Justice in Growing older will defend authorized protections for everybody, together with immigrants, LGBTQ+ older adults, and folks receiving care at residence or in nursing amenities. All older adults ought to be capable of reside free from abuse, neglect, and discrimination.
Constructing the Future
We should all commit ourselves to defending and enhancing the applications that raise and hold older adults out of poverty, in secure safe housing, with entry to well being and long-term care. By remaining steadfast in our pledge to make sure that everybody can age in dignity and justice, and by working collectively, we’ll construct the longer term all of us envision for ourselves and our family members.
