Economy

Allison Linn CNBC

Sep. 20, 2013 at 9:08 AM ET

Home health care workers, who for years have been exempt from minimum wage and overtime laws because of a stipulation that classified them as similar to casual babysitters, will soon be eligible for fatter paychecks.

The Labor Department announced this week that the nearly two million workers who provide in-home care for people who are elderly, sick or disabled will be subject to the Fair Labor Standard Acts minimum wage and overtime protections start in January of 2015.

The move is a major victory for advocates of in-home health care workers. They have long argued that the fast-growing profession has evolved beyond its origins providing informal companionship to elderly people and into a much more complex job providing medical and other care.

Now you have millions of home care workers doing this as a means to support themselves and their families, said Steve Edelstein, national policy director for the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, which has been advocating for the change.

But opponents say the new protections will make in-home care more expensive for families and government programs such as Medicaid that pay for such services, and that it could result in a reduction in covered services.

What this means for patients is less care. What it means for aides and caregivers is less work and reduced compensation, Andrea Devoti, chair of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice, a trade group for home care agencies, said in an e-mail to NBCNews.com.

Fifteen states already provide minimum wage and overtime protections under states laws, according to the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute.

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Better pay coming for home health care workers