Why am I concerned, other than because this is incredibly unfair? Because it’s personal. My wife has Parkinson’s and dementia. It currently costs more than $90,000 a year out-of-pocket to keep her safe, about double our Social Security income. The rest comes from our limited savings. There are millions of elderly households like mine with the same problem. What do we do when we run out of money and when our family—our sons and daughters—cannot afford to help? Many of these households will go broke and live subsistence lives. Perhaps they will be killed by Trump’s tax reform.
Caring for someone with Parkinson’s and dementia is a full-time job, 24/7, 8,760 hours a year, unpaid. There is no let-up. You are forced to do everything for your partner even when you have other caregivers in attendance. This is your life “until death do us part.” People who have never suffered a life-ending disability of a loved one have no idea how hard this is. To impose additional costs on those who suffer like this, to impose those costs so as to the enrich the already rich, reveals the character of the people behind such proposals: They are vicious, cruel, violent, without empathy, without compassion. In short, Trumpian.
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