By Steve Moran

At Senior Living 100, Howard Gleckman offered up a sobering, perhaps even gloomy, but realistic assessment of what the Trump Administration might mean to senior living. Ultimately, though, it’s a big unknown, and keeps senior living (and many other sectors) off balance.

I was chatting with Howard later that day, and I was struck with the realization that senior living could save the US healthcare system. 

Setting The Stage – The Problem

The federal government spends trillions of dollars on healthcare each year, and we all rightly believe many of those dollars are not used efficiently or are even wasted, making them an obvious target for cuts.

The hard truth is that we simply don’t have enough money, enough providers, or enough facilities to do a good job of providing for the healthcare needs of the nation.

And as we baby boomers age, it is getting significantly worse. Today, getting even routine tasks done can take months. One presenter talked about one marketplace where the first available neurology appointment is December of 2026, nearly 2 years out.

And because you are not depressed enough …

  • Costs are going through the roof.
  • The system is painfully complex to navigate, with older people bearing the brunt of the problem, the reality of increasing needs that accompany age. Adding to the grief is the hard truth that today’s healthcare systems are primarily designed to serve the needs of the system and providers, not the needs of people.
  • While the senior living industry spends a lot of time wrestling with the question of healthcare or lifestyle, in reality most senior living decisions are made based on current needs or anticipated needs, which means we are more healthcare than lifestyle.
  • There is no question senior living occupancy is improving, but it’s not really that great news, because right now senior living is, for most people, their choice of last resort. And even when people want or need senior living, it is unaffordable to a big percentage of the older population.

This Could Make Everything Better

Senior living could be the solution. The solution that would save the government massive amounts of money, give older people better outcomes, and make the senior living industry massively profitable.

Imagine for a moment that the government established a Medicaid-like system that would pay for senior living (AL & memory care and maybe even independent living). It would only be available if an older person moved from their home to senior living. It would be means-tested but generous. It would allow individuals to afford middle-income senior living, think Hampton Inn in terms of hospitality.

This would mean serving a much broader swath of older Americans, even those with relatively high incomes, particularly if they live in high cost of living areas.

Why It Would Work

You’re probably thinking, “No way, the cost would be massive.” Sometimes the best way to save money is to spend money, which is why there is an increased focus on healthy living. Here is why it would save billions:

  • It would get people out of hospitals faster, and more importantly, it would prevent hospitalizations and emergency room visits, conserving resources for people who can only be cared for in hospitals.
  • It would create huge opportunities to prevent or delay bad things happening to older people: fall reductions, better nutrition, and an antidote to loneliness and depression.
  • It would concentrate people with high medical needs in a single location away from a hospital, allowing a much more efficient deployment of healthcare resources.

There is one more big bonus … we have a massive housing shortage in this country. It would create a compelling incentive for older people to move from their homes into senior living, freeing those homes up for younger families.

I get that it would require a massive overhaul of our entire system and a massive need for new senior living development, but it would be transformative for the nation.

And I have no idea how we would get from where we are to this new model.