OPINION | I-2124 Hurts Workers and Businesses

by Lisa Michaud

Most small-business owners would love to be able to provide more benefits for our employees, but we often simply can’t afford to. I know many of us pay above minimum wage, offer health insurance, and are as generous as we can be with paid vacation and sick leave. But there’s only so much we can do. So when a benefit comes along that doesn’t come out of business owners’ pockets, and helps us retain our staff, we should be all for it.

Washington’s long-term care insurance program, which went into effect last year, provides workers with a significant benefit that most businesses can’t or don’t provide to their staff. In fact, only 0.5% of all businesses offer long-term care insurance to their employees. Less than 5% of Americans have private long-term care insurance, because it’s prohibitively expensive and because people with preexisting conditions — at least half of us — would be denied policies even if we could afford it.

Our employees will be able to tap their state long-term care benefits to pay for help with things like managing meals and medication, dressing, bathing, and getting around if they experience a serious illness, injury, debilitating disease, or other challenge that can come along at any age. As a middle-aged person looking at my own future without private long-term care insurance, I know what a lifeline Washington’s long-term care benefit is going to be for me.

But this critically needed benefit is now in jeopardy. Initiative 2124, sponsored by a hedge fund millionaire from California, would bankrupt the program, taking benefits away from my employees and 3.9 million other workers in Washington.

Like so many middle-aged workers, I juggle the responsibilities of my work, while making sure my mother, who has dementia, and my son, who has a chronic debilitating disease, are both getting the care and support they need. I-2124 will make the “sandwich generation” squeeze even worse. Right now, more than 800,000 Washingtonians are unpaid family caregivers, whose labor is valued at more than $16 billion a year.

I-2124 will exacerbate the labor shortage. Businesses are already struggling to find and keep workers because of the lack of long-term care and childcare coverage. Today, 1 in 4 workers, most often women, are scaling back or leaving their jobs to care for family members. By destroying the benefit fund meant to help cover the expense of home care aides, medical equipment, home modifications, and help with meals and transportation, more workers will have no choice but to quit their jobs, losing their income and their ability to save for their own needs while they care for their loved ones.

I-2124 will not save a dime for businesses, it will simply increase costs for the vast majority of middle-income families. Employees, not employers, contribute to their long-term care benefits, just as we do for Social Security and Medicare. When we are young or healthy, most of us don’t think a lot about government social insurance programs. But when the time comes and we or our family members need support, we’re sure glad those programs are there.

In the past two years, lawmakers strengthened our long-term care program by covering near-retirees and part-time workers, and making our benefits portable so we can keep them even if we move out of state someday. Washington’s Long-Term Services and Supports Commission made a number of additional recommendations that we should ask lawmakers to act on. But instead of continuing to strengthen and improve the state’s long-term care benefit program, I-2124 would destroy it. I-2124 is a lose-lose for businesses and workers. I hope you’ll join me in voting no on I-2124 when you fill out your ballot this election.

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Lisa Michaud lives on Beacon Hill and is the owner of Two Big Blondes in Seattle’s Central District.