Time to Care for America. New Approaches to Our Senior Surplus

My niece is a part of "Teach for America." It's a national teacher corps of recent college graduates who commit two years to teach in under-resourced urban and rural schools.  It's a fantastic program.  She is receiving wonderful training, and scholarship funds for graduate school.  I just finished listening to a podcast (Stanford's ecorner) by Jennifer Pahlka about "Code for America."  It's a neat program to encourage coders to work for little money and code for government.

Listen,  I love teaching and I love tech.  We need teachers and we need for our civic institutions to have better software.  But, what we really need is "Care for America."

Care for America is a program that I've just made up.  Being something that I just made up, the details need to be fleshed out.  We face a care crunch.  Between 2000 and 2030, the number of Americans greater than 65 will double.  The number greater than 80 will triple.  Mathematically there will be an increase in potential care givers of only 25%.  We can't simply put these individuals in nursing homes.   Just imagine what will happen to our state coffers when we have the recession of 2025, but Medicaid is paying for three times the number of nursing home beds.  It will be disastrous.

I am the founder of a company who's entire business model is based on these mathematical facts.  Room2Care.com is the innovative leader in Shared Senior Living.  By leveraging the sharing economy we are pairing up individuals with extra space and time with seniors who need some care. But, even an innovative, affordable senior care, like Room2Care will not be enough.

It is time to take our young men and women and create the Care Corps of "Care for America."  We will take ambitious high school graduates and provide basic training to allow them to check on some of Medicare and Medicaid's high risk patients.  They can be the boots on the ground that make sure that a heart failure patient checks his weight and that a diabetic checks their sugars.

We will soon have bluetooth enabled mobile devices that can provide almost all of the information of a modern ICU.  Now, there will clearly be roles that will require fully credentialed visiting nurses, but to collect the relevant data to allow for remote medical management will not require the training of a Registered Nurse.  Sure, they can supervise Battalions for the Care Corps, but it should be young men and women who will be the boots on the ground in this battle.

They will gain scholarship money and experience.  We will gain a more connected youth.  When they choose medical professions they will have a much deeper understanding of the impact involved.

We face a crises.  The ways that worked in the days of dial phones and AM radio will not be sufficient.  I truly hope that our elected officials will show us that the "Care for America."