Nicole Jorwic
speaker
68 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Nicole Jorwic’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
And I can say this. I'm coming out of a two-week period of doing actual direct care myself for different generations of my family. I have my grandma who has Parkinson's. I was down taking care of her. Came directly to help my mom who had her knee replaced. did and stayed with her for a few days and then had my brother come and stay with my husband and I so that my mom could have a break.
And let me tell you what, I did not have anything left to give. And I'm somebody who knows what caregiving is. So I knew I could name it, but that doesn't mean that it isn't hard, but there's so many people that can't even name it. I have sat in so many conversations with journalists or with consultants that we're working with where they'll say, yeah, I'm not really a caregiver though.
I just like schedule all the appointments, take them to them, make sure that they have food. And I like watch the realization that they realize that they're a caregiver. And while it doesn't have to be an identity that everybody takes on, it actually is really important that we recognize it and also name it because it is hard. And it doesn't have to be that way if we had systems that were in place
to actually care so that care was a choice, right? If every disabled person and every aging adult in this country had a system in place to get that home-based care that they needed when they need it, then family members can just be filling in the gaps instead of being the actual system.
Well, right now, we know that 95% of disabled people want to stay in their homes and communities and 90% of older adults want to age in place. That is not what the funding structure looks like. So if I could wave my magic wand, I would at least make sure that the funding for long-term care in this country matched what people want.
There have been decades, including a lot of work from the National Political Advocacy Department at ACLU, trying to make sure that we're working on rebalancing, getting more money into the home and community. But even in the best performing states, like the New Yorks and the Californias, it's barely maybe 60% of the funding that's going to that. So that would be one way that I would change it.
And I could go into the whys, but I won't go into it. But that would be one way to quickly address the almost million people that are on waiting lists for these services.
Definitely. And in long term care is so expensive, especially facility based care is exponentially more expensive than community based care. But then you need to have the housing units and you need to have the direct care worker support. So all of that has to come together. And yes, I empathize with all of those scenarios.
It's something that I think these are the conversations that are happening at every kitchen table. But it's unfortunately not what we're seeing reflected in the policy conversations in D.C. right now.
Well, that's that is the unfortunate reality is that so I get daily emails or phone calls from folks that will say like, oh, I'm not on Medicaid. I'm on in California. I have medical or IHS. Yes, that is Medicaid. And like the biggest thing and I've been Medicaid has been my like bread and butter work for the entirety of my career outside of when I practiced law for a little while.
And the bane of my existence is the fact that nobody knows what it's called, even the people that are benefiting from it. And that is, as Zoe said, it's because it is this federal program that is administered by the states. State and federal dollars go into it.
And Medicaid historically hadn't necessarily pulled well, but actually now pulls almost as well as Medicare, which I never thought I'd see the day, but I'm very happy. But I think it is because we have an understanding now and there is more of an understanding of of all of the different services that it covers. It is that essential health program for 72 million people.
It does provide long term care, home and community based services for 10 million disabled adults and even more older adults. And it provides all half of all kids their health care. So it's this health care program. It's this long term care program. It's also a workforce program. it pays the wages of direct care workers.
Also, one in four child care workers rely on Medicaid for their own health insurance coverage. So it's this web. Medicaid is a web of care that's really complicated. And I do, to Zoe's point, think sometimes that's by design. But frankly, I think that legislators are understanding that they might have
around a little too much and they're about to find out because more people are... Is that the legal term? That's the legal term, yes. Because we are seeing the fact that they're proposing some of these big cuts and they're forgetting about the way that the disability community rose up in 2017 when they proposed some of these same things.
Exactly, the Latin root, yes.
I have the luck or unluck of dealing with Congress most days. And so what is currently being proposed is almost $900 billion in cuts to the Medicaid program. which frankly, that's like how much the country spent more than, but around how much they spend per year to cut the entire program. And what that would do is shift a ton of that responsibility, fiscal responsibility to the states
There is not a state in the country that has the amount of money to make up for any cut of that size in federal funding. And so ultimately what that would do is completely rock the foundation of the Medicaid program. And right now they've passed step one. So one thing that's really important to know is they're trying to use this really wonky budget reconciliation process.
And the reason that they're doing that is they only need a simple majority. So they only need in the Senate 51. and a simple majority in the House. And they've passed up one, which is a framework. So the House passed their version that does include that $880 billion in cuts.
But for those of you who might not have been watching C-SPAN two weeks ago, they actually almost didn't because of Medicaid advocates, because people are being loud, because people understand that they're going to lose health insurance coverage. that their family member isn't going to get those home and community-based services anymore.
Showing 21–40 of 68 · page 2 of 4
← Previous
Next →