The nation’s caregiving work force is fraying. Paid providers are overworked and undervalued, often forced to take on multiple jobs or turn to public assistance just to scrape by. Many family caregivers are struggling as well, sacrificing their own health and well-being to tend to loved ones for years on end. Consistent, skilled, affordable care is in short supply — and getting shorter — and those who provide it are shouldering an increasingly unsustainable burden.

Policy experts and decision makers can debate the details, but America needs to stop taking its caregivers for granted. Paid or unpaid, these workers are looking after our mothers and grandfathers, our sisters and uncles. They assist in dressing, bathing and feeding some of the most vulnerable among us, helping them cope with the aches and pains and fears and frustrations of growing older. They deserve better than to be casually abandoned. It’s worth remembering that many of us will eventually find ourselves among their ranks.

Read more in the New York Times.