Jay Caspian King writes for the New York Times about our worsening nursing home crisis. For decades now, big corporations and private equity firms have been buying up nursing homes, collecting money from Medicare and Medicaid to provide care, and failing their residents. Will Congress act to protect vulnerable older Americans and people with disabilities?
Early on in the pandemic, the media did a good job of highlighting the nursing home crisis. Thousands of nursing home residents died needlessly. The facilities were understaffed and doing a poor job of caring for their residents. But, the attention did nothing to address the problem.
Instead of fixing the nursing home crisis, many politicians tried to bury it. The National Academy of Sciences issued a report recommending major industry reforms, such as smaller nursing homes, better pay and training for workers. Right now, some nursing homes have 100 percent turnover, staff are so underpaid.
The Biden administration also drew up a plan to improve nursing home conditions and made note of private equity’s mounting investment in nursing homes–up to $100 billion in 2018.
But reports and plans recommending specific reforms to the industry have been issued for the last several decades and little has been done to improve conditions. It costs money to ensure nursing homes have more and better paid staff. It costs money to oversee nursing homes and ensure that when they violate the law, they are penalized appropriately.
There are a lot of regulations in place. But, even when major violations are identified, nursing home are allowed to continue to operate. Change is not possible without an overhaul of chain nursing homes and other for-profit nursing homes.
We need more transparency as to where government money is going, how nursing homes are spending the money they receive from government. People need to know how much of that money is being put towards patient care. We cannot continue to let nursing home owners profit without being held to account for the care they provide residents.
Here’s more from Just Care:
Leave a Reply