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.

That eight-game winning streak now feels like decades ago.

The team Minnesota has been over the past week looks nothing like a crew that could reel off so many wins in succession, or contend for anything of consequence in the playoffs, should it even get there.

No, the panic meter needle shouldn’t tilt that far to the right at this point, but Minnesota’s 119-103 loss to the Pacers in Indiana raised some major red flags.

The Timberwolves’ typically potent defense was rendered irrelevant by Indiana’s pace. The Pacers played with a pace and rhythm in the transition and halfcourt that didn’t allow Minnesota to sink its teeth in physically and bother Indiana in any way. The Pacers shot 48% from the field, with 30 assists on their 46 buckets.

Frankly, it was Indiana’s defensive physicality — something for which the Pacers are not traditionally known — that bothered Minnesota.

The Wolves committed 17 turnovers while shooting 27% from distance.

“It was kind of a funky, off performance all around,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch told reporters.

Anthony Edwards was a gametime decision with a hand laceration. He played, but not well. The guard, who was piping hot from beyond the arc for the first half of the season, has not been since the calendar flipped to February. That trend continued Monday, as the guard went 1 for 11 from 3-point range.

Minnesota was outscored by 24 points in Edwards’ 34 minutes. The next worst plus-minus on the team belonged to Nickeil Alexander-Walker, who was a minus-13.

Edwards settled for threes on a night where he was successful inside the arc, going 6 for 8 on two-point attempts. That was the story of the game for Minnesota, who settled for a number of bad shot attempts against a defense that it traditionally could pick its attempt against.

“I thought we could’ve gone to the hoop a lot more than we did. They were pretty physical on the ball and we needed to with the ball and at the point of attack offensively, and we were never able to do that,” Finch said. “We didn’t have any composure. We were wild tonight offensively, whether that was wild with the ball or wild with our shot selection. Every time we had a chance to tighten up the game, or did tighten up the game, we’d get a stop, come down, take kind of a rushed three in transition.”

Minnesota fell to Indiana’s skeleton squad last week in overtime at Target Center, a night in which Obi Toppin had 34 points while shooting 7 for 10 from distance. Indiana was near full strength Monday, but it was still the same Toppin. The forward buried six triples in the win. But he had more help this time around. Indiana star guard Tyrese Haliburton had 24 points and 11 assists.

Whatever Indiana wanted to do, it did with relative ease.

“I think our offense is bothering our defense a little bit too much,” Finch said. “That’s something that’s reared it’s head at times for us. We’ve got to get back to guarding at a high level like we were doing.”

The Wolves have now lost three of four games. And while the fight for a top-six seed to avoid the play-in tournament rages on — Minnesota, currently in eighth in the West, is a full game back of Golden State for the No. 6 seed, and two back in the loss column — the Wolves are torpedoing their chances with their current run of poor play.

Starting Monday, burning restrictions are in place across more than a dozen Minnesota counties, including several in the Twin Cities metro.

The restrictions apply to Anoka, Benton, Chisago, Hennepin, Isanti, Kanabec, Mille Lacs, Morrison, Pine, Ramsey, Sherburne, Stearns, Todd, Washington and Wright counties.

Karen Harrison, a wildlife prevention specialist for the Department of Natural Resources, says dry conditions are causing higher risk of wildfires.

“Minnesotans make a big difference. 90 percent of our wildfires are caused by people and often they’re unintentional,” Harrison said. “And so that means that people can take steps to reduce the chances of wildfire starting.”

Harrison encourages residents to use alternative methods of disposing yard waste instead of burning such as composting, chipping or taking brush to a collection site.

She said restrictions are usually removed by the end of spring.