In a searing op-ed in the New York Times entitled "'We Had No Idea What Was Coming’: Caring for My Aging Father,” opinion writer Michelle Cottle shares her caregiving story and discusses how we as a nation support our family caregivers today. The substance and the emotions of Cottle’s essay will be all too familiar to anyone who has been a caregiver. In particular, the fact that no matter how much you know about health policy or navigating bureaucracy, or think you knew—when you are caregiving for someone you love, you realize you know far too little. For most of us, one of the first steps on a caregiving journey is the realization that you are alone and have to build your support team.

Caregiving was a hard task before Trump was reelected. Trump did not create the unrelenting and cruel world that family caregivers must navigate. He did, however, make it much harder. Cottle summarized this pain:

Let’s look at Cottle’s claims one by one. The most grievous blow that the Trump administration has wielded against America’s caregivers is the cuts to the Medicaid program which provides 61% of the nursing-home care in this country. According to the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), which Trump signed into law on July 4, 2025, includes cuts to Medicaid of almost $1 trillion over the next 10 years.

In addition to providing care in an institutional setting, Medicaid pays for a substantial amount of care for people in their homes. As the Kaiser Family Foundation reports, “Over one-third of Medicaid spending pays for long-term care, with most of the spending paying for home care—also known as ‘home- and........

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