From his wheelchair, 71-year-old Ken Sternfeld spends several hours a week building his strength with the help of an aide.<\/p>\n
The retired New York pharmacist and his wife, Ronnie Sternfeld, who is also medically challenged, get about 10 hours a day of in-home care, including meal preparation and help with cleaning.<\/p>\n
“About a year-and-a-half of fighting, of filling out forms, waiting for answers, getting denied, having appeals, doing a fair hearing,” Ken Sternfeld told CBS News of the uphill battle the couple faced to have their healthcare costs covered by insurance<\/a> before they were able to access Medicaid. “They wait until you give up. They want you to give up. I believe that.”<\/p>\n The Sternfelds say that before they accessed Medicaid funds, they depleted<\/a> their retirement and savings accounts, paying out-of-pocket for care. Even now, their only source of income is Social Security, which covers rent and little else.<\/p>\n Ronnie Sternfeld says she “absolutely” worries about how they are going to pay their expenses.<\/p>\n “It’s extremely frustrating because we worked hard,” Ken Sternfeld adds.<\/p>\n Much of that frustration is due to a recent, rapid rise in long-term care costs. An AARP Public Policy Institute study released<\/a> earlier this year found that those costs spiked nearly 50% over a five-year period from 2019 to 2024, outpacing incomes and hitting middle class families the hardest.<\/p>\n “So they’re being pushed into sort of two pathways, one of which is to forego care,” AARP President Dr. Myechia Minter-Jordan said. “The other is to try to sort of parse together healthcare for themselves, which then often depletes most of their savings.”<\/p>\n That pathway often involves family caregivers. According to an AARP report, in 2024, family caregivers put in nearly 50 billion hours of care worth more than $1 trillion, all of it unpaid labor.<\/p>\n “We have caregivers who are working full-time jobs and also full time taking care of their loved one,” Minter-Jordan said. “And in many instances, this is unsustainable, and it is a wake-up call for our country.”<\/p>\n