[HN Gopher] The senior population is booming. Caregiving is stru...
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The senior population is booming. Caregiving is struggling to keep
up
Author : toomuchtodo
Score : 31 points
Date : 2025-11-21 21:05 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| For 10yrs, I supported 1-3 agencies that owned/ran group homes
| for developmentally disabled adults.
|
| These included homes for clients who were non-ambulatory, clients
| who had profound health issues and one home for dd-so. Besides
| living and healthcare expenses, the agencies had regulatory
| overhead imposed by 3 different governing agencies.
|
| Even with all of this, the clients had lives with daily offsite
| activities, jobs, public events, theme parks, etc.
|
| The per-client budgets of these group homes were tiny compared to
| nursing homes. They were funded by client SS disability payments,
| supplemented by some modest public funding.
|
| These homes where founded and administered by boards made up of
| the client's families. Importantly, they were _non-profit_ ; they
| lacked the massive overhead that comes with shareholder
| obligations and executive salaries+perks.
|
| They've been providing superior care for over 4 decades. After I
| left, they began to experience a persistent risk of funding cuts.
| These were driven by a major hospital chain executive who became
| governor and then state senator.
| th0ma5 wrote:
| So why are nursing homes so expensive?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| The most visible difference is nursing homes are owned by
| publicly traded entities, who come with massive overhead of
| shareholder obligations and executive salaries.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Publicly traded entities which are components of many
| pension funds. The boomers essentially took out a loan
| against themselves, and now it's due, with interest to
| boot.
|
| There's some schadenfreude seeing the boomers complain
| about getting the enshittification treatment they
| themselves got rich off.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Publicly traded entities which are components of many
| pension funds.
|
| A shareholder relationship is parasitical and exploitive
| by it's nature, as defined by Dodge Brothers v. Ford.
|
| Making pension funds feed on that relationship - that is
| whatever that is. I couldn't call it a necessary evil
| because it's by design.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/01/why-nursing-homes-and-
| hospic...
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Baumol effect. TVs[1] are unrealistically cheap. This means
| that more money is chasing less automatable services. There
| is no technology that makes caregiving 100x more labor
| efficient. More money chasing the same supply means prices
| rise until demand reaches equilibrium. No amount of
| deregulation can increase the labor efficiency of caregiving
| to match gains in goods production.
|
| 2. And other goods mass manufactured.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| "Line must go up".
|
| The same line boomers enjoyed riding on while their property
| and other investments went up massively without any effort on
| their part, at the expense of subsequent generations.
|
| Now, they're getting a taste of their own medicine as someone
| else (private equity in this case) wants to ride the line
| going up and even just robbing subsequent generations isn't
| enough to pay for it.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Certainly privately owned ones skim a lot off the top to pay
| shareholders and bonuses, but the reality is that the cost of
| caregiving is almost entirely labor and rent, and those
| things do not benefit from efficiency gains, so the cost of
| service just goes up forever because of Baumol's cost
| disease.
|
| Realistically the only way to stabilize the price of
| caregiving is to automate the hell out of it, like Japan is
| trying to do. It's a rather dystopian thought that the only
| way senior care won't bankrupt us is if we have robots do it
| all, but what can you do.
| defrost wrote:
| For general interest: The award-winning ABC
| series 'Old People's Home for 4Year Olds' and 'Old People's Home
| for Teenagers' were not only heart-warming shows. A new Griffith
| University study found the series have been instrumental in
| public recognition of the social and health benefits of
| intergenerational practice.
|
| ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRlgQ8bVV1o
|
| ~ https://iview.abc.net.au/show/old-people-s-home-for-4-year-o...
|
| There's a _lot_ I can say about older populations and their
| abilities despite being old, right now I 'm have to step out for
| the day for several hours, possibly more, so I'll just leave this
| one approach above that's been tried and works well.
|
| Also, the elder population aren't homogenous by any means, there
| are a good number that can assist others with meals, gardens,
| etc.
| pedalpete wrote:
| There is a Melbourne start-up called Andromeda, which makes
| playful robots for the elderly. https://andromedarobotics.ai/
|
| I always thought this would be a market Japan would dominate with
| their aging population and early development in robotics, but I
| don't think I'm seeing that.
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