Some 80 million people will be seniors by 2050. Our national home-care infrastructure isn’t close to ready.
At 6 a.m. on a winter morning in Ridgewood, N.Y., a woman I’ll call Valia leaned on her kitchen counter, drinking black tea and packing a giant purse. She wore her blond-gray hair in a bun and pulled on an ankle-length brown puffer coat. “OK, I’m taking my medication, I’m taking my telephone, my tablet,” she said, going down her checklist. She whispered goodbye to her cat and her 26-year-old son, who was still asleep, and lit a cigarette to smoke on her way out.