Biden Announces COVID Relief Package

1/20/2021

Last week, President-Elect Biden announced a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package. The “American Rescue Plan” focuses on a new round of stimulus checks to Americans and an ambitious vaccine distribution plan to control the pandemic. HCAOA will be submitting comments to the new Administration about the plan. Members are encouraged to send comments and feedback to vicki@hcaoa.org. Here are some highlights from the plan that could affect the home care industry, including a minimum wage increase and extension of emergency paid leave measures:

Emergency Paid Leave

Reinstitute requirements and eliminate exemptions for employers to provide paid leave; this also would apply to healthcare workers and first responders
Provide over 14 weeks of paid sick and family and medical leave
Provide $1,400 per week paid leave benefit for individuals earning up to $73,000 annually
Extend refundable tax credit to reimburse employers with less than 500 employees to cover 100% of the cost of paid leave
Extend emergency paid leave measures until 9/30/2021

Direct Relief to Families

Additional $1,400 per person checks (to supplement $600 payments in December)
$400 per week unemployment insurance supplement and extend programs through 9/30/2021
Increase minimum wage to $15/hour
Call on employers to provide frontline essential workers back hazard pay

Vaccines

$20 billion for a national vaccination program in partnership with states, localities, Tribes, and territories
Expand FMAP to 100% for vaccine administration

Testing

$50 billion to expand COVID-19 testing (purchase of rapid tests, investments to expand lab capacity, support for schools and local governments to implement regular testing protocols)

Protect Vulnerable Populations in Congregate Settings

Funding for states to deploy strike teams to long-term care facilities and to conduct infection control oversight

Child Care

$25 billion for hard-hit child care providers, including family child care homes
Expand Earned Income Tax Credit for childless adults

Protect and Support Workers

$350 billion in emergency funding for state, local, and territorial governments to support first responders and other essential workers

2 Comments

Lana Wilson link

1/20/2021 12:55:13 pm

I am a small business owner of a Home Instead franchise in Provo, UT. I am greatly concerned about the proposed COVID Relief Package. While I understand it is attempting to help families, it will devastate businesses and hurt our economy and families overall.

Our business provides non-medical services to people in their homes, so they can remain living in their homes and not have to go to a care facility. We provided one-on-one care that includes meal preparation, medication reminders, errands and transportation, personal care (bathing, dressing, toileting, brief changes, personal hygiene, etc.), and housekeeping. Demand for our services has continued to grow through 2020 and into 2021, and it is a service that is already expensive for most seniors and disabled individuals and is not covered by most insurances.

My biggest concern is the minimum wage increase to $15 per hour. This wage increase will be detrimental to small businesses and hurt our overall economy. Minimum wage is not meant to be a livable wage; it is meant to be an entry wage for teenagers and those just entering the workforce who have no experience. Our minimum wage in Utah is the $7.25/hour. We pay our caregivers well over the minimum wage (starting at $11/hour for those with no experience) and offer training at $9.00/hour. If minimum wage is raised to $15/hour, we will have to raise our service rates by at least 40%-50% just to pay our caregivers and overhead. Most of our clients are on a fixed income and cannot absorb a 40% to 50% increase in their service rates, thus we will lose clients and be forced out of business. And that is only the effect on our business and industry, not to mention the effect on every other industry. This will force major inflation in our country and not solve what the administration is trying to accomplish. Specifically, costs for everything will go up proportionately, and $15 will be equivalent to today's $7.25.

My next major concern is the proposed "Direct Relief to Families," namely the unemployment benefit extensions. When unemployment benefits were extended to include an additional $600 per week in the first COVID relief package, we saw a huge decline in the workforce. Our business requires a single caregiver per client in the client's home. Our industry has a high turnover in workforce because most of our workforce are students and those just trying to enter the healthcare industry. We rely on a steady pipeline of applicants and are constantly hiring and training new caregivers to staff our client's needs. We did not lay off any caregivers when COVID restrictions were enforced; however, we saw a huge decline in applications coming in when the COVID unemployment benefits started, and throughout the period that they were offered. Increasing unemployment benefits only encourages people to not work and receive government benefits. There were jobs available - we were hiring still - but people were not looking for work because they could make more money sitting at home collecting unemployment than if they got a job.

These are just two of my main concerns with this Relief Package. I could go on about $1.9 Trillion - does the administration even compute how much money this is? That is $5,800 per person in the US: man, woman, child, senior, working and non-working. For every person able to work in America, there are at least three that cannot work, and that number is growing with our aging Baby Boomer population. So for every working person, they will have at least a $23,000 additional tax burden over what our national debt is already. $1.9 trillion will increase our already unsustainable nation debt by 8%. How will any of this be paid for? This will only hurt Americans in the long term and will put many small businesses - businesses that have already endured an extremely tough year - out of business.

Please stop with all the stimulus that is just trying to buy favor but will hurt our citizens in the long term. Encourage citizens to work. If you want to spend money, provide incentives for people to enter the workforce, not take away those incentives. Help small businesses offer benefit packages to their employees. Offer scholarships or incentives to people entering the healthcare field. Stop throwing money at people for no reason and encouraging them to be idle parasites on our economy and society. Please do not pass this legislation. Save our country's small businesses and seniors who live on a fixed income.

Thank you,
Lana Wilson

Home Care Association of America

1/21/2021 09:27:12 am

Lana,

Thank you for this feedback. We will keep this in mind when HCAOA submits comments on the proposal to the Biden Administration.

Biden Announces COVID Relief Package

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