We All Have to Age
For Wilder’s Director of Healthy Aging and Caregiving, Kimelyn Knight, workdays rarely look the same.
Some days, she helps someone organize their medications, so they feel confident managing them on their own. Other days, she talks through what it means to ask for help. Help with bathing, with dressing, with getting through the day safely.
What does not change is this: The people she works with did not plan for their lives to look this way.
“No one wakes up wanting a chronic illness,” Kimelyn says. “No one plans to need these services.”
Kimelyn works with older adults in and around St. Paul through Wilder’s healthy aging services program. Many of the people she supports want the same things most of us do. They want to stay in their own homes, remain connected to their communities, and hold on to as much independence as possible as they age.
For many of them, Medicaid makes that possible.
What Healthy Aging Support Really Looks Like
The care Medicaid helps cover is not abstract. It is practical, personal and deeply human.
It includes help with bathing and dressing. It includes someone making sure meals are eaten and medications are taken on time. It includes supervision that keeps people safe when memory or mobility becomes unreliable.
“These are the supports that keep people independent and living in their communities,” Kimelyn explains. “Without them, people are often forced into more restrictive and expensive care. Not because it is what they need, but because it is the only option left.”
Across Minnesota, more than 80,000 adults aged 65 and older rely on Medicaid to access this kind of care. Many live with chronic health conditions. Many live on fixed or very limited incomes. Some live alone. Some live far from family. All deserve to age with dignity.
What Happens When the System Constricts
Recently, advocates and service providers from across the state gathered as part of the This Is Medicaid coalition to raise concerns about proposed Medicaid funding cuts and policy changes tied to federal legislation.
For organizations like St. Francis Health Services, which supports older adults and people with disabilities in communities across Minnesota, both rural and urban, Medicaid is not a small piece of the puzzle. It is foundational.
“Medicaid is how we care for low-income older adults,” said Carol Raw, CEO of St. Francis Health Services. “Cuts to Medicaid are damaging and hurtful, especially in smaller and rural communities.”
At Catholic Charities Twin Cities, Medicaid funding supports case management that allows older adults to remain safely in their homes. This support is often critical for people who do not have family or friends nearby to help.
These community-based supports do more than preserve dignity. They are also more cost-effective than institutional care. When they disappear, people decline faster, experience more isolation and ultimately require more intensive and expensive interventions.
Where Wilder Healthy Aging and Caregiving Services Fits In
Wilder sees these impacts from multiple angles.
Through direct services, staff like Kimelyn work alongside older adults every day, responding to what aging looks like in real life. Through research and public policy engagement, Wilder brings those lived experiences into conversations about how systems are designed and redesigned.
When renewal timelines shorten or reporting requirements become more complicated, older adults with mobility challenges, cognitive changes, or limited access to technology are often the first to fall through the cracks. Coverage can be lost not because someone no longer qualifies, but because navigating the system becomes overwhelming and inaccessible through bureaucratic red tape.
These are the moments when policy meets everyday life.
“The Policies Made Today Will Impact Us All”
Kimelyn often reminds decision-makers of something simple and easy to forget.
“We all have to age,” she says. “The policies made today will eventually impact them, too.”
When funding is cut or access is narrowed, the effects are not temporary. People are pushed into settings they do not want. Their independence erodes. Their health declines more quickly. Families, communities and systems absorb the cost.
Wilder’s role is to keep these realities visible. Grounded in relationships, data and lived experience, Wilder helps ensure decisions are made with care, not distance.
Because healthy aging is not just an issue for older adults. It is a measure of how well a community takes care of one another today, and in the future, we are all moving toward.
