Companies, families, seek funding boost for hard-to-fill home health care jobs
The in-home health care aides who work with disabled people across the state, giving families some respite, often make less than $15 an hour.
With wages in entry level jobs up across much of the economy, they can make more at retail stores and fast food restaurants, according to industry officials and the families that depend on this help. A job that has always been hard to fill has gotten harder to fill.
“They can make $15 [an hour] at Walmart or Chick-fil-A, or they can come to our home and wipe our brother’s butt for less,” said Michael Abramowitz, one of many advocates who visited the North Carolina General Assembly Wednesday, hoping for a funding increase.
This industry is heavily subsidized by the state, and the aides who do this work make an average of $12.59 an hour, according to industry figures.
The companies and non-profits that provide these aides, from the international BAYADA Home Health Care to small local companies, are pushing for a boost in state and federal subsidies. Advocates met with lawmakers Wednesday seeking $140 million more a year split over a pair of government programs that reimburse these entities for the costs of in-home care.
Turnover in aide jobs hovers around 50% annually, industry executives said. That trickles down to families like the Abramowitzs, leaving long gaps in the help they get to care for Debbie Abramowitz’s brother, Dennis, who suffered a traumatic brain injury 30 years ago in a car crash.
The Abramowitzs are 70 and often feel “absolutely, completely, alone,” Michael Abramowitz said.
Medicaid expansion, expected to pass the state legislature this week and ultimately pump billions of dollars in new federal funding into the state’s health care system, is expected to help this industry. How much it changes things remains to be seen. Many details must be sorted out as expansion is implemented in North Carolina over the coming months.
The industry is hoping for new funding in the state budget coming together now in Raleigh, and Wednesday was the first time the Abramowitzs travelled from Eureka in Eastern North Carolina to meet with lawmakers on the issue.
They said they remain skeptical about the outcome, but “we don’t feel alone.”
“We go home to Dennis today and we tell him, ‘Don’t worry Dennis, we are not alone anymore,” Michael Abramowitz said. “There is a light in the darkness.”
