Long-Term Care: A Crisis Waiting to Happen

The demographic tidal wave of an aging population threatens to overwhelm the United States' social safety net, with millions of Americans likely to require long-term care services in the coming decades. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, those over the age of 65 will comprise nearly 22% of the population by 2030, up from just 13% in 2010. A significant portion of these seniors will require assistance with everyday tasks, and yet the majority of Americans have put little thought into planning for this phase of life, leaving caregivers and age-related services scrambling to cope with a predicted shortage of over 10 million caregivers by 2050. In recent years, experts have coined the term "silver tsunami" to describe this impending caregiving crisis, which highlights the urgency and limited options pressing this care sector facing challenges.

One major issue here is a stark shortage of caregivers to provide assistance to this growing population. Some 91% of caregivers are private citizens who provide informal, unpaid care; this includes family members and friends, yet some experts predict that this too will become increasingly unsustainable as people have fewer children, live farther apart, and require increasing long-term care. "The burden of caregiving falls disproportionately on women, often those from more marginalized communities, including low-income and minority women," noted Christine Cassel, former chief executive officer of the American Board of Internal Medicine.

Exploring Key Causes of Creating Demand for Long-Term Care

• Longer average life expectancy: Advances in medical technology, increases in healthy habits, and breakthroughs in disease prevention and treatment have all led to an ageing population.
• Rise of complex, costly life-threatening illnesses: As people live longer, they are more likely to contract complex and long-term health problems which require expensive treatments, necessitating longer periods of care during an individual's lifetime

Some experts estimate that a whole family's lifetime average health-event could exceed $84 trillion, a less-than-amusing sum that highlights how expensive each sick family wins when long-term care develops.