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AARP AARP States Nebraska Press

AARP supports legislation to help family caregivers

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Fred Froese/Fred Froese Photographie (www.fr

Informal caregivers are the backbone of Nebraska’s long-term care system - saving taxpayers hundreds of millions every year - often at great personal sacrifice in lost wages and retirement benefits.

AARP Nebraska supports Legislative Bills 955 and 1090 in the Business and Labor Committee to provide temporary paid leave to workers who need time off to care for family members. Nebraska’s roughly 238,000 family caregivers provide unpaid assistance valued at $2.2 billion annually.

Advocacy Director Mark Intermill said that as the number of Nebraskans ages 18-65 declines and the 65 plus population increases, “we must pay greater attention to supporting the efforts of caregivers and reducing their financial risk as much as possible.”

According to an AARP Nebraska telephone survey conducted in December 2013, forty-three percent of Nebraska workers do not have access to paid sick leave. Of 807 people surveyed, 63 percent strongly support or somewhat support paid caregiving leave that works similar to unemployment insurance.

“These workers are at risk of lost income if they need to take time off to provide a service that is of significant societal benefit,” Intermill said. “If family caregivers stopped doing what they are doing, the state’s budget would be in big trouble.”

Caregivers delay or avoid the need to move a family member into a nursing home at taxpayer expense. Medicaid pays the costs of long-term care once the person needing care exhausts their financial assets. The median “spend-down” period in Nebraska for someone in a long-term care facility is 13 months before Medicaid picks up the tab.

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