NY Disability Rights Advocates Seek Federal Dollars for Home Care

In the United States, home-care workers, mostly women and people of color, earn on average only $12 an hour. (Adobe Stock)Advocates for people with disabilities in New York are pushing for the federal budget resolution to include $400 billion in Medicaid funding for home- and community-based services across the U.S. as part of the Better Care Better Jobs Act.

Heidi Siegfried, director of health policy at the Center for Independence of the Disabled New York (CIDNY), said the majority of people in the U.S. would prefer to get long-term care services at home. However, she pointed out in New York and across the country, the field has been drastically underfunded for a long time, and argued incorporating the Better Care Better Jobs Act would lead to better pay and health benefits and address the workforce shortage.

“To put $400 billion in Medicaid that will be targeted specifically to home- and community-based services, this would be a start to helping people with disabilities get the care they need, to stay out of nursing facilities, which have now been shown to be a deathtrap during the pandemic,” Siegfried asserted.

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