Vermont

The fact that we desperately need a single payer national health care system is very tragically visible in the elder care industry. My mother paid huge amounts of money each month for a room in a nursing home. In spite of the heroic efforts of the working staff, her care was very poor, because the place was always understaffed. The owners are often in other states, and they run these places purely for profit. The workers are horribly underpaid and over worked, so the turnover is through the roof. Many of the caregivers were working two or three jobs just to make ends meet! And they had their own families to care for. No one can provide decent care when having multiple jobs is their reality. We need a national health care system that pays elder care givers a decent living wage and we need a system that keeps people in their own homes as much as possible. Right now, the system we have is so expensive that even people who earn the salary of a doctor or a lawyer have trouble affording to pay a caregiver. And the horrible substandard care that our elders receive is tragic. We need to remember that we will all become old, if we are lucky. And I know many people who have had to put younger family members in these places when their loved ones became too disabled for the family to care for at home. This is a huge capitalism and social failure.