Who's gonna take care of grandma?

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 February 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Eldercare has been hit extremely hard since the pandemic began. A severe nursing shortage is lowering the availability and quality of care for seniors. What can be done to reverse course?

Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:12.0	In some ways, 92-year-old Dorothy Sam Wilson kind of reminds me of my grandma.
0:18.1	She loves good food, laughs easily, and she has these sayings she likes to rattle off.
0:23.5	We're here today and tomorrow's another day.
0:26.9	And also she has her share of vices.
0:30.4	Scratch tickets.
0:31.4	Blut say more.
0:34.5	I love scratch tickets.
0:36.9	And I like to go to the casino.
0:39.6	Have you been keeping track of how much money you win or lose on scratch tickets?
0:43.4	Oh yeah.
0:44.6	I'm not going there for a while.
0:47.7	We're talking with Dorothy inside her room at the Blair House.
0:51.9	It's an assisted living facility in Milford, Massachusetts.
0:55.2	It's where she's been living for the past few years.
0:57.8	All in all, she says it's been pretty good.
0:59.9	I don't have to cook.
1:01.4	I don't have to clean.
1:03.4	I don't have to do anything if I don't feel like it.
1:06.6	They take care of everything.
1:08.8	And yet, behind the scenes at the Blair House, there's a problem.
1:12.4	The company that runs it cannot find enough people to do pretty much everything.
	...

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