Medicaid Cuts Could Force More Kids to Become Caregivers
· Time
When I was just 13-years-old, my mother suffered a traumatic brain injury at work, and I was forced to become her caregiver. No one came to help us; there was no support system in place, and it all fell on me. Over the next several years, I helped her to function with daily tasks like standing, walking, dressing, eating, managing doctor's appointments, and even paying the bills. I was the parent, she was the child. I’m not alone. According to AARP, there are over 5.4 million children in the U.S., especially girls, currently caring for chronically ill and disabled family members.
Last month, the GOP announced new proposed healthcare cuts as part of a $200 billion dollar budget bill to fund military operations and expenses for the war in Iran. This could put additional strain on younger family members to become caregivers before they turn 18.
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This news comes as millions are already bracing for planned reductions, expected to take effect this October, from the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBA) that President Donald Trump signed into law last July. An estimated 11.8 million Americans who require Medicaid are expected to lose critical coverage—including up to 4.3 million people who rely on Medicaid Home Care Based Services (HCBS), like in-home nursing care. For children and adolescents who are pushed into caregiving at a young age, this threat of loss of critical medical support is likely to be catastrophic.
The impact of the OBBA and the new potential bill goes beyond people losing access to health care. These two legislations could push more young people to take on caregiving roles and worsen the existing crisis of caregiving youth in the U.S. It could also deepen the present mental health problem impacting millions of young people in America.
I know the significant toll of caregiving at a young age firsthand—plus, this mental health crisis is well-documented by research. According to a study from the Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology Journal, this vulnerable population of young people has higher rates of depression, anxiety, substance use disorders, and suicide in comparison with their peers.
I experienced these effects too. For years, while caring for my mother, I struggled with debilitating panic attacks, abused alcohol and drugs and engaged in codependent relationships. It wasn’t until I reached my late twenties that I took myself to therapy, that I saw the severe impact the role of caregiving had on my mental, physical health, and well-being into adulthood.
I’m not the only one. Another young caregiver I spoke with, Rimbatara Neomardhika (Neo), age 16, has been caring for his father over the last four years since he suffered a stroke. He shared his feelings with me, "Sometimes I get anxious and worry about what the future is going to be like,” he tells me. “I find myself losing focus and losing sleep because I'm worried about what's going to happen to him. It's hard to take care of someone as a child." This relentless burden isn’t talked about enough.
We talk a lot about the caregiving crisis in adult populations that affects 63 million caregivers. A recent Pew Research Center report showed that 1 in 10 Americans provides care to aging parents age 65 or older, but we don’t talk enough about the kids doing this work. Caregiving youth are often unseen. This unpaid essential work that young people do before and after school daily leaves a significant imprint on the lives of the caregiver, and the weight of that emotional load is carried into adulthood.
Although I was fortunate to be able to rebuild my life years after being a caregiver for my mother and had the means to afford treatment like cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure response prevention, it wasn’t easy. It caused me to take on additional mental healthcare costs and pay thousands to see specialists to work toward healing.
The Republican proposal to further slash Medicaid would only create more adults like me, faced with childhood caregiving trauma that takes time, sometimes decades, to overcome.
Fortunately, there are solutions to support these young caregivers amid additional healthcare cuts. Although there are some non-profit organizations, such as the American Association of Caregiving Youth (AACY), that provide limited support in select states like Florida, there's still much more work to be done. Change begins by prioritizing the safety and well-being of children who are caregiving for family members by recognizing and identifying this largely invisible population in the first place. The sooner we do this, the sooner we can get them the mental health support and respite care they deserve. The type of help that I wish I’d had, that could have prevented years of struggle for me.
Professor Saul Becker, a researcher based in the United Kingdom, who has studied young carers for three decades, has helped to create laws to protect children in the UK who are caregivers, tells me that the U.S. needs to have an "ideological and cultural belief that children are important.”
The Trump Administration claims to prioritize children, but they need to act now to protect even the most unseen kids—the caregiving youth in the U.S.—before their mental health problems grow beyond repair. By doing this, it could prevent current and future young caregivers from a lifetime of struggle and save lives.