Our View: How can Minnesota still be so unprepared?

We certainly saw this coming. For years and even decades, the professionals who care for aging Minnesotans have been hollering and waving proverbial red flags about the rapidly graying baby-boomer generation; how it could overwhelm assisted-living facilities, nursing homes, and other senior-care services; and how there just won’t be enough space or workers to care for everyone. In just the last decade, the population of Americans over 65 has ballooned by a third. And in Minnesota, by 2030, a fourth of the state is predicted to be older than 65, the age when long-term care is more likely a necessity.

Knowing all this, Minnesota is ready, right, after heeding the many, many calls for action? Right?

Hardly. Instead, 12,500 caregiving positions statewide are currently vacant, and while experts determined 27,000 additional nursing-home beds would be needed by 2045 to meet the coming demand, one in three beds have disappeared since 2000. Since the pandemic, especially, nursing homes and other senior-care facilities, rather than expanding, have been closing off wings, shutting down floors, or going out of business entirely, due to a lack of public and health-insurance funding and a dearth of workers willing to care for the elderly at wages clearly not competitive enough.

“At a time where we should be ramping up services for seniors (and) access to services, we’re actually seeing the access to senior care decline,” Kari Thurlow, president and CEO of

LeadingAge Minnesota

, an advocacy nonprofit in Minneapolis, said in an exclusive interview last week with the News Tribune Editorial Board. “Especialy in rural communities (like so much of Northeastern Minnesota), it is very difficult to staff nursing homes. Then it becomes a cycle. If you’re not able to admit residents even when they need it, you’re not able to generate revenue to sustain the operations. That leads to further financial fragility. …

“It’s heartbreaking and quite frankly shouldn’t be the way that we should be treating our seniors,” Thurlow additionally said.

Her organization and the Bloomington nonprofit

Care Providers of Minnesota

together make up the

Long-Term Care Imperative

, a collaborative advocating for seniors and senior care, especially at the state Capitol in St. Paul — where there’s lots of overdue work to be done this session.

Minnesota’s elected state representatives and state senators are uniquely positioned to address the coming crisis. They’re the ones who set the rates nursing homes and other care facilities charge both Medicaid and private-paying patients. And those rates are what determine caregivers’ salaries and benefits, the services residents receive, and the number of residents served by each facility.

“But lawmakers are apathetic,” Care Providers of Minnesota charges on its prepared materials. “Despite public support, the Legislature has chosen not to invest in long-term care.”

In 2023, the Legislature did allocate $300 million to struggling facilities. However, it was one-time funding, not a long-term solution, and it has since ended. Also, new mandates from the Legislature have heaped nearly $200 million in additional costs on already struggling facilities, specifically $20 million for time and a half pay for 11 holidays for care-facility workers and $175 million for minimum-wage increases. And Gov. Tim Walz’s budget proposal this year would cut $700 million from those same facilities.

“(With the) mandates, plus the governor’s cuts, you’re going to see financial conditions worsen and you’re going to see an increased lack of access,” Care Providers of Minnesota CEO Toby Pearson said in the interview with the Editorial Board. “And it’s going to hit in rural Minnesota first, because that’s where we have more of an aging population.”

To be sure, without legislative action this session, Minnesotans can expect even more wings, floors, and entire facilities to close — all with that boom of aging baby boomers about to be in need of care in those facilities.

One pair of bipartisan measures

in the House

and

in the Senate

would modify elderly waiver rates and nursing facility reimbursement rates. Another pair of companion bills in the

House

and

Senate

would make necessary changes to Minnesota’s Nursing Home Workforce Standards Board. Rep. Natalie Zeleznikar is a co-author of the House version of each. The Republican from Fredenberg Township, whose district includes a bit of Duluth, is a former senior-care operator and long-time advocate for the industry and the residents it serves.

Even just the introduction of legislation is reason for optimism, according to Pearson and Thurlow. But it needs to be followed by overdue action.

“We feel like the committees are listening to us,” Thurlow said. “Obviously, it’s a great thing when it’s bipartisan.”

“We have been at the table at the Legislature saying we need more money to pay workers’ wages and benefits,” said Pearson. “They have repeatedly said no. … It’s frustrating on two levels. On one level, for a long time we were trying to get people’s attention (about the coming crisis), and now it’s hard because people have heard it so much it’s hard for them to hear the actual urgency.”

That urgency isn’t new. Neither is Minnesota’s long-time lack of meaningful action in response. That demands to end. This legislative session. Now.

“Our View” editorials in the News Tribune are the opinion of the newspaper as determined by its Editorial Board. Current board members are Publisher Neal Ronquist, Editorial Page Editor Chuck Frederick, and Employee Representative Kris Vereecken.