The Care Industry's Broken Business Model

25 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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This content was created by Lisa Skinner. This content was uploaded by Lisa Skinner. This is a YouTube video titled "The Care Industry's Broken Business Model" (created 2026-06-25). The excerpt is a multi-speaker discussion between two unidentified speakers about systemic problems in the home care industry: caregivers (including dementia caregivers) receive low pay and less training compared with jobs like baristas, while home care companies charge families high hourly rates and retain large margins. The speakers discuss consequences for affordability, care quality, and caregiver recruitment/retention.

Baristas receive more training than dementia caregivers and more pay, you know, and more pay.
Why would you ever do this? The care industry is completely broken. The way these home care companies work is that they typically charge in most cities across America $40 to $50 an hour, and they turn around and pay less than half of that to the care worker. The rest goes into sales, marketing, profits, franchise fees, overhead, and all that other stuff.
I was just reading something recently where somebody posted an article that said baristas receive more training than dementia caregivers and more pay, you know, and more pay.
Why would you ever do this? You know, why would you ever do care for someone, you know, if you're just like trying to make income when you could work at Starbucks, you could work at Walmart, you could work at McDonald's, anywhere pays better compared to barista. Caregiving is very, very psychologically, emotionally, physically demanding work. These home care companies in my area charge $40 an hour and pay the care workers, you know, somewhere in the low teens, like $12 to $15 an hour. They keep the rest of the money for themselves. That creates two problems. One, how many families can afford $40 an hour? Not a lot. Yeah, exactly. So it really— the affordability issue crushes families, and frankly, the quality issue, because the care worker is not being paid well. So