{"id":70539,"date":"2025-02-05T12:08:06","date_gmt":"2025-02-05T20:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=70539"},"modified":"2025-02-05T12:08:06","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T20:08:06","slug":"with-looming-federal-cuts-senior-health-care-needs-a-shake-up-ca-leaders-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=70539","title":{"rendered":"With Looming Federal Cuts, Senior Health Care Needs a Shake-Up, CA Leaders Say"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Selen Ozturk<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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For California\u2019s older adults, \u201cmental health is the big gap we\u2019ve never been able to fill,\u201d said Anni Chung, president and CEO of Self-Help for the Elderly.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Left to right: Dr. Gerson Galdamez (moderator), Anni Chung, Sarah Steenhausen and Dr. Luke Bergmann at a panel on older adult behavioral health held by Insure the Uninsured in Sacramento on Tuesday, February 4. (Credit: Selen Ozturk)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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SACRAMENTO \u2014 For California\u2019s older adults, \u201cmental health is the big gap we\u2019ve never been able to fill,\u201d said Anni Chung, president and CEO of Self-Help for the Elderly.<\/p>\n

While federal funding freezes under Trump threaten to widen this gap more than ever before, barriers like social isolation and limited English are nothing new for many California seniors struggling to access help.<\/p>\n

Since Chung\u2019s community organization for Asian seniors began in San Francisco\u2019s Chinatown as part of the federal War on Poverty in 1966, the neighborhood has grown to have the highest senior suicide rate citywide, with many immigrant and monolingual seniors unable to access city services.<\/p>\n

In response, Self-Help for the Elderly has grown to service 50,000 seniors a year across five Bay Area counties through behavioral health care including mental health counseling, social services, employment training, food aid and affordable housing navigation \u2014 \u201cbut you need to integrate all this with physical health, and for that you need not only funding but trust,\u201d said Chung at a Tuesday, February 4 panel on senior behavioral health held by\u00a0Insure the Uninsured Project<\/a>\u00a0in Sacramento.<\/p>\n

The pandemic only made these gaps starker.<\/p>\n

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Anni Chung and Sarah Steenhausen. (Credit: Selen Ozturk)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe all feel lonely sometimes. But when you don\u2019t have anybody to call, things like where your next meal is coming from when you can\u2019t go out to get groceries, can be the final straw,\u201d Chung explained. \u201cOne senior came to us and said the most depressing thing for her was when her grandchild was born during the pandemic, and for two years she couldn\u2019t see or hold the baby.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rising use of telehealth appointments \u201cdoesn\u2019t work well with seniors, especially those who don\u2019t speak English and can\u2019t tell the doctor what\u2019s bothering them,\u201d she added. \u201cWe had one senior who only used WeChat to talk with her family in China and here, and when that broke down, she kept crying until our IT person fixed it. Then she got very happy again. When little things become serious, we wonder \u2018Where did this temper come from?\u2019 For seniors, it\u2019s always cooped up inside.\u201d<\/p>\n

These stories are multiplying exponentially as California ages.<\/p>\n

By 2030, for the first time in state history, adults aged 60 and over will comprise\u00a025%<\/a>\u00a0of the population and outnumber those under 18.<\/p>\n

Over 9 million Californians are currently over age 60; by 2040, this number is projected to reach 11.4 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is an epidemic of older adult isolation, and it drives so many other problems, like homelessness for low-income seniors,\u201d said Sarah Steenhausen, deputy director of policy, research and equity at the California Department of Aging, adding that the most common feedback she receives about this issue is older adult social isolation, cultural stigma around seeking help and fragmented access to services.<\/p>\n

Now, funding cuts under the new administration are leaving California\u2019s health leaders to wonder whether these services can survive at all.<\/p>\n

A Monday, January 27 executive order from President Trump aiming to freeze a broad swath of federal funding programs was sued that Tuesday by 22 Democratic state attorneys general, including California\u2019s Rob Bonta.<\/p>\n

On Friday, U.S. district court judge John McConnell Jr. granted a\u00a0temporary restraining order<\/a>\u00a0blocking the Trump administration from freezing federal loans, grants and aid to 22 states, until McConnell can hear the states\u2019 request for a longer-term block.<\/p>\n

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Sarah Steenhausen and Dr. Luke Bergmann. (Credit: Selen Ozturk)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

With this uncertain crisis of federal support, \u201cWe need to be funding change at the local level, and it can\u2019t be one-size-fits-all,\u201d said Steenhausen.<\/p>\n

She cited as a success story Contra Costa County-based community organization Choice in Aging, which dramatically improved depression among local Afghan older women during the pandemic by holding cultural knitting circles where they could talk about the issues they faced while stuck at home.<\/p>\n

In San Francisco, already facing a $876 million deficit over the next two years, \u201call our aging departments were asked to do a minimum 15% cut, meaning our services will be cut,\u201d said Chung.<\/p>\n

Since Trump\u2019s executive order ending birthright citizenship \u2014 now blocked by\u00a0two<\/a>\u00a0federal judges \u2014 \u201cWe\u2019ve seen ICE asking Chinatown employers for ID\u2019s, so we\u2019ve already begun partnering with nonprofit legal services to tell seniors their rights,\u201d she continued. \u201cIf more cuts are coming under an administration that\u2019s hostile to the people we represent, we have to rely more on community partners like these, or shut our services.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, \u201cSelf-Help for the Elderly was not started waiting for the government to come into our community. We started based on the principle of self-determination,\u201d Chung added. \u201cIf we don\u2019t have something seniors need, we\u2019ll find someone in the community to give it to them. We have to go back to why we started back in 1966: helping seniors live freely, not in institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re driven by a preoccupation with responding to crises by getting people out of our field of vision \u2014 by the political urgency of people, many of them older adults, who are inconvenient to us, who we don\u2019t want to see as a part of our public landscape,\u201d said Dr. Luke Bergmann, director of behavioral health services for the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad died three years ago at age 90. He was a very esteemed professor of philosophy, and he developed spinal stenosis. His health degraded rapidly because he wasn\u2019t moving,\u201d he continued. \u201cHe couldn\u2019t care for himself. His pension wasn\u2019t enough. We had to deliberately destitute him of his assets to get him in the Medicare-Medicaid PACE program. That was the only way we could get him care, and it\u2019s not an uncommon story.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWe\u2019re stuck in a culturally driven loop of being obsessed with crisis, which prevents us from actually caring for people over the long-term \u2026 and that drives state policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recent landmark examples of this include the 2022\u00a0CARE Act<\/a>\u00a0allowing petitioners to ask a court to create a court-ordered care plan for someone with an untreated severe mental illness like schizophrenia, and the 2024\u00a0Senate Bill 43<\/a>\u00a0expanding eligibility for state conservatorship to include people unable to provide for personal safety or necessary medical care, in addition to food, clothing or shelter \u2014 the first update to California\u2019s conservatorship law in 50 years.<\/p>\n

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The panel discusses the need for changes to behavioral health care for California\u2019s older adults in the face of looming federal cuts. (Credit: Selen Ozturk)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhen we address mental health, we need to address physical health as well, especially for seniors who disproportionately suffer co-morbid chronic illnesses,\u201d Bergmann said.<\/p>\n

Of San Diego County\u2019s 31,000 long-term care beds, only 225 are occupied by people served through Bergmann\u2019s behavioral health specialty care system \u2014 largely due to steep costs and, now, looming federal public health cuts.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than anything, our department is building up capacity for long-term residential elderly care. The continuum of care gap is unconscionable when the average price is $8,000 a month,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA big part of the $1.2 billion budget I run in San Diego relies on block grant funding,\u201d Bergmann continued. \u201cI\u2019m substantially worried about the cuts. But I\u2019m more worried for those who don\u2019t live in California. Here, we\u2019re fortunate to have political actors who have committed to firewall California as much as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only way that I think we can remediate this deprivation of investment in behavioral health is to think about it as a culture change,\u201d he added. \u201cWe\u2019re fighting to help the expression of agency over an ever-longer time for people. We\u2019re giving them space to build their own life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BySelen Ozturk Feb 5, 2025 For...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70540,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70539\/revisions\/70540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}