A nation of compassionate Christians my ass. I’ve not read something more horrific in quite a while.
Unfortunately, I can relate to dealing with this type of crap in Michigan regarding what often appears to be arbitrary nursing home rules. My experience dealing with some of these places goes back close to 15-20 years with my aged parents, now deceased, both of whom had Alzheimer’s.
Complaining to an ombudsman does nothing because there’s no enforcement mechanism as the article so aptly explains especially when the resident has Alzheimer and family are that person’s main reliable advocate. Even when you win, you lose. Its all about the money…and boy, do many of these nursing homes make bank on the suffering of our elderly loved ones. Even the few sympathetic and caring professionals that work in some of these homes are often overruled by callous administrators that are more concerned about collecting the outrageous monthly payments over care and concern for actual people. And Lord help you and your loved ones if you complain or express a need that should be addressed on behalf of your family member. Besides $5000 a month from Medicare or private insurance is one hell of fee for meals and a bedroom and maybe a planned activity a week. That amount doesn’t include medicine, some forms of therapy and other things they tack on either. Everything they do they charge for a la carte. The whole system for how we treat our elderly loved ones in nursing care needs an overhaul and serious law-enforceable rules put in place imo. There’s very little oversight and/or penalties levied unless major abuse by an entire nursing home is uncovered, and then its too late when a place is being threatened with remedial action or in jeopardy of being shut down…and that rarely happens either.
This is what inevitably happens when a healthcare system is based on a profit motive.
Sorry about losing your parents to Alzheimer’s. My sister in law has it and is getting worse by the day. But this story is just beyond the pale but not surprising because we have a history in this country of treating our elderly very badly.
Wasn’t there a story a few weeks ago about some 30 something accountant running a hospice in Texas telling his staff to increase “pain” meds to kill off patients quicker. He wanted a faster patient turn over.
Elder care seems to be the new civil rights frontier. A nasty intersection between heartless corporations looking for profit in all the wrong places and helpless people unable to properly resist and without any government advocates. .
I would feel a little sorry for the nursing homes, except for the part about how they have to certify their ability to deal with non-perfect patients as a condition of keeping their license, and the part about understaffing. So not sorry for people who are deliberately taking actions they expect to lead to the death of their patients, to simplify their lives and make more money.
My grandmother totally would have been one of the evicted ones. I remember hearing the stories about her beating nursing home attendants with her cane.
Well I daresay they deserved it…I mean, she TOLD them to give her more tapioca and put Matlock on the TV! 
I think they may have been asking her to eat her vegetables. (She didn’t do TV. I think she was in her 70s when we got ours.)
The RNC is going to advocate for a platform at their convention providing for vastly increased spending on ice floes.
WTF is up with this country? God, this article makes me so sick and very scared. This problem is going to get so much worse as we face the retirement bubble.
Have they tried just leaving them at a Trump rally? They would fit right in and maybe some of the other crackpots would adopt them?
Nah. They were probably the ones who put their cantankerous old folks away in the nursing home in the first place…having their bills paid by Medicaid and complaining that they pay too many taxes for other people who do the same thing.
There is always the Solvent Green solution. I’m sure Republicans are looking into it.
You nailed it. We see this all too often, in the mental health field. It actually works in the other direction for mental health. We see it all the time, a client, that is functional, being held longer in a mental ward because they HAVE insurance. Reasons, however feeble they may be, are found to keep them in treatment longer. So many of our case managers fight, on behalf of the families, versus the local psych hospitals. The smallest act of defiance is exaggerated, and their stays extended, all so they can milk the insurance companies or Medicare and Medicaid for more money. I’m sure you can imagine the uphill climb of our social workers, because they go up against the word of a psychiatrist, who can just say that the client isn’t fit to leave to a judge. Most of our clients are impoverished or homeless, so they contract legal aid, who are noble part time, volunteer attorneys, who cannot give it the diligence it’s due. As a result, some of these poor souls end up staying in those miserable hospitals 4 to 5 times longer than they should. So, it’s corrupt from top to bottom, in both directions. Really, criminally, sad.
Better call Saul.
I’ve enjoyed life, and still enjoy it right now, but once I get to the point where I really don’t know what’s going on I don’t want to be kept going just because I can be. I hope I’ll be conscience enough to know when “It is a good day to die” and unlike Old Lodge Skins the magic will work I decide to let it.
Deep Throat had it right: Follow the money!
While this is a tragic story, as a manager at such a facility, there are many times that a resident comes to us a at a level that is appropriate to decline to a point that the level of care is not. As our population lives longer and longer, often where quantity of life outweighs quality of life, there are difficult choices to make. The reality is more money is spent on healthcare in the last two years of one’s life than the sum total spent in the previous years. End of life care is expensive both financially and emotionally, and until our citizenry understands that more isn’t always better, stories like this will increase. Unfortunately, we, the caregivers taking care of your loved ones take the brunt from both family and management. We are asked to do more with less as pay rates from government insured patients either don’t rise with inflation, it worse decrease as everyone wants lower taxes, and candidates promise them.
Some of the hardest working people I have ever met…Nurses Aides, are often paid less than cashiers at your local Wal-Mart, yet are expected to ensure at least adequate care for between 10 and 15 patients, many of whom are total care, unable to do anything for themselves. Believe me when I say we don’t do it for the money, we do it because we love your moms and dads.
Until everyone realizes that the current system is broke and is willing to look at the needs of patients and the facilities that care for those patients nothing will change.