My parents are salt-of-the-earth people. Lifelong Mainers and retired educators, both of them, and they spend their retirement years visiting nursing homes.
Between the two of them, every week they are in and out of several nursing homes in the midcoast area where they live. They go from room to room, from resident to resident, visiting, listening to stories, reading mail, offering the consistency of a friendly face and sought-after companionship, no agenda, no strings attached. They lead a Bible study group once a week, where residents of several different faith traditions gather to reflect on the stories of their faith. My dad even taught himself to play the guitar and started a little band called Silver Threads, and now he and his friends lead sing-a-longs among the nursing home residents — an appreciative audience! — and offer concerts of old favorites and holiday tunes.
In retirement, this is their ministry. They give hundreds of hours of volunteer time to it every year. They know nursing homes. They’re listening, day after day, to the joys and heartaches of aging seniors.
And on more than one occasion, they have said to my siblings and me, “Please don’t ever make us move to a nursing home.”
Often there’s a little hint of desperation in their voices — the desperation that comes from knowing how they want to age, hoping and praying they’ll be strong and healthy for many years to come, and having a keen awareness of the realities that many people face.
My parents cared for their own aging parents — fortunately, my grandparents were mostly able to stay in their own homes, with the exception of one who spent the final few months of her life in a skilled care facility — and it was not easy. Now my grandparents are all deceased, and my parents, still healthy and active and enjoying their retirement, are beginning to wonder what choices will be available to them as they age.
My parents are not alone. As Maine’s senior population swells, more and more of our parents, our grandparents, our neighbors, our friends, and members of our faith communities are worrying about the limited choices they’ll face as they think about aging.
That’s why I’m looking forward to voting yes on Question 1 — Maine’s universal home care initiative.
Here’s why this initiative is so important: Demographically, Maine is the oldest state in the country — and we’re getting older. By the year 2030, the share of Maine’s population over age 65 is expected to increase by 50 percent.
Those statistical figures are important, but they aren’t just numbers — those are people, each one a beloved child of God. Every aging senior is someone’s parent, someone’s grandparent, someone’s special aunt or uncle, someone’s neighbor, someone’s friend. We owe it to them to ensure that we are putting systems in place to guarantee that they can age with dignity.
Currently, the options are grim: the median annual cost of home care in Maine is over $50,000 a year — much less expensive than a nursing home, but still out of reach for most Maine families. Every day, families are forced to make impossible decisions about how to care for their loved ones, and too many seniors are being forced out of homes they don’t want to leave. At the same time, home care workers barely make above minimum wage, which is often not enough to support their own families. As a result, turnover among home care workers is 67 percent a year.
Question 1 offers hope in the form of universal home care — the guarantee that any senior and any Mainer with a disability who needs assistance with an activity of daily living in order to stay in their home will be able to get it. Question 1 also provides support for family caregivers and increased wages for home care workers. The initiative is funded by a 3.8 percent tax — that’s 1.9 percent for employees and 1.9 percent for employers, or the full 3.8 percent for those who are self-employed — on individual income over $128,400, affecting the wealthiest 2.6 percent of Mainers. Currently, income over $128,400 isn’t subject to the payroll tax at all.
The reason why I think people of faith and conscience should care is because the universal home care initiative addresses three critically important justice issues that all of us should be concerned about: (1) Dignity of those who are aging and people with disabilities; (2) Fair wages and benefits for home care workers, who are almost always women, people of color, and immigrants; and (3) Fair and just taxes.
Dignity of those who are aging and people with disabilities
At the foundation of my faith is the conviction that every human being is a child of God, created in the image of God and beloved by God. While our society often places supreme value on youth and ability, as people of faith, we recognize and affirm the full humanity and sacred worth of all persons, including seniors and those with disabilities.
Seniors have a right to age with dignity, and to make choices about how they will spend the final years of their lives. Likewise, people with disabilities have a right to make decisions about their living situations, and to live with as much independence and personal agency as their abilities will allow. While skilled nursing care in a nursing home or assisted living facility is the right choice for many, people should be able to live as independently as they choose, especially when they don’t require the level of support that a nursing home provides.
Our respect for the inherent dignity and sacred worth of all persons must always lead us to enact policy that recognizes, maintains, and strengthens the human rights of all; that honors human dignity; and when needed, that allows for compassionate care and independence.
In a world guided by principles of justice and compassion — a world where we believe the dignity of seniors and people with disabilities mattered — the decision to ensure universal home care would be self-evident.
Fair wages and benefits for home care workers
The sacred texts of nearly every faith tradition call us to treat workers with respect, dignity, and fairness, and they condemn those who would withhold fair pay to workers.
The reality is, the vast majority of home care workers are women, people of color, and immigrants. Typically their wages and benefits are poor. In fact, people often find they have to leave the profession, even if they enjoy it and find meaning in it, even if they feel called to this vocation, simply because it doesn’t provide an adequate salary to support a family.
The universal home care initiative would ensure fair wages and benefits.
Like seniors and people with disabilities, home care workers — women, people of color, and immigrants — are persons of sacred worth, too. As such, they deserve a living wage for their labor — sufficient wages to afford shelter, food, clothing, health care, and other basic expenses.
Now more than ever, Maine needs compassionate, capable home care workers. Caregiving is important, life-giving work, but it can be physically, emotionally, and financially draining, too. Question 1 acknowledges the truth that workers’ rights are human rights.
Fair taxes
People of faith are right to be distressed as the gap between the rich and poor widens worldwide. Fifty-five years ago, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. insisted, “God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty.” And yet increasingly, that is the stark and painful reality our nation faces.
It is the role of government to ensure that both the burdens and the benefits of a nation’s common life are shared equitably and proportionally among its citizens. Tax laws must be judged by their impact on children, low-income families, the elderly, people with disabilities, and other vulnerable populations. Our laws should correct inequalities, not institutionalize them.
Most people believe that long-term care should already be paid for through our existing social service insurance system, but it isn’t — in part because our tax system benefits the wealthy.
We might ask: Why should high-earning individuals be exempt from paying Social Security tax on the portion of their income above the arbitrary line of $128,400? Wouldn’t it stand to reason that those with the highest wages are best equipped to pay their fair share of taxes, not that they should receive special exemptions?
The issue of fair and just taxes is a profound justice issue, one that I and many of my clergy and faith leader colleagues addressed last fall during the debate around the Republican tax plan.
This initiative funds a desperately needed service, while moving us closer to tax fairness.
For these reasons, the universal home care initiative has been endorsed by a whole host of senior citizen, disability rights, worker, small business, and veteran organizations, including the Maine Council of Churches.
In a recent editorial in the Bangor Daily News, Rev. Dr. Myrick Cross, who serves as priest-in-charge of St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Brewer, shared his own reasons for supporting Question 1. Having cared for an elderly father and then his wife, after she’d suffered a stroke, now he finds himself caring for an aging mother and a daughter with Down’s Syndrome — and it’s not easy. “Every week, it’s like doing a puzzle to figure out who can come in when so my mom is not left alone for more than a couple of hours,” he says. “I wish I could find a live-in person to help. After researching several agencies, I found I could not afford their services.”
That seems to be everyone’s story when it comes to finding appropriate care for their aging loved ones: “I wish I could… but I found I could not afford it.”
A budget is a moral document, and so is a tax plan. And so is a society’s provision for caring for its elders in their final years. These decisions have moral and ethical implications, and one way or the other, we will feel these implications long into the future.
In Rev. Dr. Cross’ words, “Making sure the wealthiest Mainers pay their fair share, so everyone can receive the care we need when we need it, seems to me common sense and part of what it means to live in a community. I think the real ‘scam’ is that for-profit nursing homes and health care [agencies] are protecting their business interests at our expense.”
I have studied this universal home care proposal pretty extensively, and I’ve listened to the objections. I understand the opposition. But I also understand that every vote we take leads us either one step closer to the world we want to live in, or one step further away. The world I want to live in is one that cares for aging seniors with dignity and compassion — and Maine has the opportunity to be the first state in the country to prioritize that by ensuring universal home care.
On Election Day, without hesitation, as an expression of my faith, I’ll be voting Yes on Question 1.
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