You’ve seen the headlines:

“Hospitals Face a Shortage of Nurses as COVID Cases Soar.”

“Rural Hospitals Can’t Find the Nurses They Need to Fight COVID.”

“A Crisis Situation as Military Medical Teams Deploy to Staff Hospitals.”

What you may not have known is that before COVID, we were facing a global shortage of health-care workers. A World Health Organization survey estimated that before COVID, we nWHO also estimates that in order to provide vaccinations globally, we need an additional 1.1 million health workers. Competition for health-care workers is already fierce, be it national or global.

Now with COVID, the essential delivery of health-care services across the board has been disrupted. Every business in the United States providing care of any kind is suffering; hospitals, home care agencies, and senior living such as assisted and skilled care.

This is a serious problem that is not going to go away. COVID has traumatized and exhausted our health-care workers and they are quitting, retiring or resigning in droves. Can you blame them?

We are heading for the perfect storm. According to the most recent data from Genworth, 10,000 baby boomers will turn 65 every day through 2030. Seven out of ten will require long-term care. Who is going to provide that care?

Already there are over 41.8 million caregivers providing care for an adult over 50, according to the latest AARP data. They are mostly family caregivers, trying to manage work, children and caring for aging parents, and they are stressed out.

I am looking at the future of health care and elder care and I am afraid. The system we currently have in place is broken for many reasons, and COVID is only one of them. Unless we make some major changes in how we provide and pay for care, and how we both educate and treat our health-care workers and family caregivers, we are doomed. Bold approaches are needed that address these issues in a variety of ways.

To start, we need to pay higher wages for most health-care workers. If you want a home health aide or certified nursing assistant to take a job, pay $20 an hour and offer decent benefits and a future career. Help them get a full nursing degree for a longer work commitment.

Quality long-term care needs to be more affordable, and not just for the wealthy. I would like to see a total revamping of our long-term care system, with some kind of universal long-term care, including help with “aging in place,” or community-based care. Impoverishing yourself or moving assets around to qualify for Medicaid should not be the only option.

We need to rethink our concepts on institutional long-term care and redesign skilled nursing to be safer, smaller and more resilient to pandemics. State agencies need to do more than police these facilities every few years.

We need to address the needs of those millions of caregivers providing unpaid care to their elderly parents. The American Rescue Plan originally included over $400 billion for “human infrastructure” some of which would help caregivers, but it was dropped in the final bill.

At least we should offer a tax break for an “adult dependent” to lessen the burden financially. Employers should consider an “elder care benefit,” that offers flex time, helps employees coordinate care and ideally, helps pay for care. A few forward-looking companies are already doing this.

We need to revise our immigration policies. Why not actively encourage those with any kind of health-care background to move to the United States and streamline the visa process? If they want a new career in health care, let’s offer free education if they qualify. Colleges and universities can partner with the senior living industry to fund courses for home health aides, nursing degrees and more.

If we don’t address these issues now, we will all pay for it in the toll it takes on our families, our health-care workers, our caregivers, our elders and, yes, our economy! As Rosalynn Carter so beautifully said, “There are only four kinds of people in the world: Those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers and those who will need caregivers.”

No matter what, we will all be affected.