How will President Biden’s New Infrastructure Plan Affect Healthcare?
The new $2 Trillion job and infrastructure plan still needs to pass the desks of Congress, but while we anticipate a similar passage to that of the Covid-19 American Rescue Plan, we want to discuss the effects of the plan on Healthcare.
Although the plan doesn’t talk to Medicare specifically, it does have implications for long-term care, community-care services, and a boom in community health workers. In a previous labor statistics report, we discussed how in the next decade we are going to see a large expansion of the healthcare sector due to the age demographics of the United States. With the majority of the U.S. population being baby boomers, the healthcare sector is anticipating an increased demand in healthcare services and therefore growth in the demand for healthcare workers.
With increased healthcare costs, we’ve seen a trend of home-healthcare and aging in place. The other confounding factor was the illuminated value add of community health workers during the Pandemic. Because those populations most affected by the virus were people of color, their community hospitals and healthcare systems breaking under the pressure of the pandemic demands, community health workers were able to reach those who would have been otherwise forgotten. In an earlier speech, Biden addressed the need for expansion of community healthcare workers for pandemic relief, who would be hired on as full time staff as an extension of our healthcare system moving forward.
This new plan includes infrastructure for healthcare. According to the White House Fact Sheet:
Solidify the infrastructure of our care economy by creating jobs and raising wages and benefits for essential home care workers. These workers – the majority of whom are women of color – have been underpaid and undervalued for too long. The President’s plan makes substantial investments in the infrastructure of our care economy, starting by creating new and better jobs for caregiving workers. His plan will provide home and community-based care for individuals who otherwise would need to wait as many as five years to get the services they badly need.
To further break this and other portions of the Plan down:
It pledges $18 billion to upgrade veteran hospitals and clinics.
$400 billion pledged to community-based care, including home-care for older adults and those on Medicaid. The money will be split between healthcare workers, to fund the expansion of their hiring and services, as well as to extend long-term care options for those in need.
In order to reduce the use of nursing homes and other institutional care, the bill will expand the Money Follows the Person Medicaid program to extend the use of community-based and home-care options, ultimately aiming to make healthcare more affordable for people who need long-term care. This would also reduce the burden on the U.S. healthcare system because people will receive care at home and within their communities, reducing hospitalizations and intervening before chronic conditions become an emergency due to lack of routine care.
Despite criticism as to the funding sources for this bill, and the worry of the largest expansion of the social safety net since the Great Society of President Johnson, the plan aims to expand failing infrastructure, combat racial injustice, and take the lessons learned from the pandemic, to expand our healthcare system for all people. Although the nature of this bill is universal in application to all people within the U.S., those who will benefit the most are communities of color, subsequently those most affected by the pandemic and the majority of our healthcare workers in the United States. The bill includes fixing failing water infrastructure, housing, transportation, all of which directly affect communities of color, the improvements reducing healthcare spending overtime because of less lead pipes, unsanitary drinking water, sustainable and safe housing, and safer transportation options.
Sources:
Gooch, K. (2021, March 31). Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure PLAN: 5 notes for healthcare leaders. Retrieved April 02, 2021, from https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/biden-s-2-trillion-infrastructure-plan-5-notes-for-healthcare-leaders.html
FACT sheet: The American jobs plan. (2021, March 31). Retrieved April 02, 2021, from https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/31/fact-sheet-the-american-jobs-plan/