That might be the conclusion Confucius and Mencius would draw from the big front page article in the NYT yesterday: More Profit and Less Nursing at Many Homes. It seems that large private investment companies have bought up nursing home companies, then cut costs, which means reduced levels of care and especially the number of staff and nurses, sucked out large profits and, sometimes, resold the now debilitated organizations for yet more profits. It’s all about the money; the people involved are simply tossed aside.
There’s much to be dismayed about in the article. It says something about the US as a society: we are much more supportive and interested in spending hundreds of billions of dollars on an unnecessary war than we are in finding ways to get resources into the hands of families to make it easier to care for their elderly members at home. Because that is the first best alternative: home care. What is needed to make that work is more and better visiting nurse and home health services. Also, more attention should be paid to improving work conditions for middle-aged family members to make it easier for them to take time off their jobs to manage more complex family care situations.
But, no. In the infantile political milieu of the US any such actions are labeled, by the right wing, as "socialist" or "European." And, you know, we certainly don’t want to be "European," where life expectancy is longer. No, sure wouldn’t want those old people living any longer….
It is hard not to be snarky when confronted by this (from the NYT article):
Habana Health Care Center, a 150-bed nursing home in Tampa, Fla., was
struggling when a group of large private investment firms purchased it
and 48 other nursing homes in 2002.The facility’s managers quickly cut costs. Within months, the number of clinical registered nurses at the home was half what it had been a year earlier, records collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services indicate. Budgets for nursing supplies, resident activities
and other services also fell, according to Florida’s Agency for Health
Care Administration.The investors and operators were soon earning millions of dollars a year from their 49 homes.
Residents
fared less well. Over three years, 15 at Habana died from what their
families contend was negligent care in lawsuits filed in state court.
Regulators repeatedly warned the home that staff levels were below
mandatory minimums. When regulators visited, they found malfunctioning
fire doors, unhygienic kitchens and a resident using a leg brace that
was broken.“They’ve created a hellhole,” said Vivian Hewitt,
who sued Habana in 2004 when her mother died after a large bedsore
became infected by feces.
I know, I know, someone will argue that socialism, too, has its faults and that people die because of them. Yes, I agree. I study China, after all, and am quite aware with the failings of their system. But that should not deflect our attention from the problems that our own brand of capitalism has spawned. Money dominates much of our social life and many of our social practices, and, as Confucius anticipated centuries ago, that can only produce Inhumanity:
The Master said: "If there were an honorable way to get rich, I’d do it, even if it meant being a stooge standing around with a whip. But there isn’t an honorable way, so I just do what I like." (7.12)
The Useless Tree 
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