Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Home Care Workers Paid 10 Cents An Hour Less Than They Were A Decade Ago
The analysts at P.H.I., a nonprofit research and consulting group, sift through federal data each year to see how the nation’s swelling corps of home care workers is faring. That’s how we know that the aides who care for disabled people and older adults in their homes — helping them bathe and dress, preparing their meals, doing laundry and housekeeping — earned a national median of $10.21 an hour in 2005, adjusted for inflation. (Span, 9/23)
The Visiting Nurse Service of New York, one of the largest nonprofit home health care agencies in the United States, likes to highlight a lineage going back to its founder, Lillian Wald, who began nursing the poorest immigrant New Yorkers in their homes in 1893. Whatever its outcome, a federal whistle-blower lawsuit served on the agency on Thursday showcases how far today’s billion-dollar entity has come from its early days, when Ms. Wald’s visiting nurses charged a dime, or nothing at all, for their services. (Bernstein, 9/23)