The plight of health care's "forgotten" workers

By the numbers: Home health workers, nursing home assistants, and other therapists and orderlies hover around poverty and are predominantly women and people of color, according to PHI, a research group that studies this group of care workers.

• 9 out of 10 of these workers are women.
• Half are black or Hispanic.
• A vast majority have no advanced degree, and median pay is between $11 and $15 an hour with little to no sick pay and benefits.

The big picture: It is almost impossible for workers to bathe, feed and otherwise care for their patients while social distancing, and a reliable source of masks or other protective gear for them is not guaranteed.

• That makes their already high-risk job even more high risk for them, as well as their patients who are most likely to die from contracting COVID-19.

• If they, their clients or the facilities decide to hold off on services, they lose what little income they have.

The bottom line: "There's no doubt that we're being sort of forgotten in all this, and I fear that mentality is going to eventually come back and punish us," Joe Russell, executive director of the Ohio Council for Home Care and Hospice, told the Washington Post.