What is stigma?

[Andylusion]

Director's Chair: Fashion-Couture Dreidel


Fashion and being able to appreciate design trends helps. This also makes me wonder if there's some extra intrigue associated with attitudes towards school uniforms. Do you think you're child's choice of clothing reflects his/her 'inner-consciousness'?


View attachment 100824

Federal officials are promising to subject nursing homes to closer scrutiny in the coming months. President Clinton has ordered a crackdown on repeat offenders, the Justice Department is investigating charges of fraud and abuse, and Congress is poised to reshape Medicare and other programs that pay for long-term care. Yet such efforts focus more on cutting costs than improving care; they fail to recognize that standards remain lax and reforms fall short because of the very nature of nursing homes. Facilities that care for nearly 2 million elderly and disabled residents form a lucrative private industry that profits directly from pain–while taxpayers foot the bill. Nursing homes ring up $87 billion of business each year, and more than 75 cents of every dollar comes from public funds through Medicaid and Medicare. The less of that money homes spend on care, the more they pocket for themselves and their shareholders. To insure those profits, nursing homes are careful not to skimp when it comes to investing in politics: The industry gives millions in contributions to state and federal officials, insuring weak public oversight.

The Shame of our Nursing Homes

From 1999

Right, and I can tell you from first hand experience, that Clinton didn't do much.

Government run anything is terrible.

And unlike you, it isn't a partisan politically motivated hypocrisy. It's simply how government works.

The reason why people are treated well in any given system, is because if they are not, they leave and you lose money.

The reason a store provides good products, isn't because of some altruistic purpose... is because if they don't they lose customers, and if employees fail to meet those expectations, they lose their jobs.

The moment you setup any system where that isn't the case, then you circumvent the profit motive, and thus the customer service motive.

I worked at a company that provided equipment and medication to both privately run care centers, and the government care centers.

I've been in both. Toured both. Seen how both operate, and the quality of both.

I was in a state run mental care place here in Ohio, where their holes in the floor, large enough that you could see the dirt under the building. Where the flooring was worn away to the point entire sections of carpet were missing. Half the lights didn't work, and the place smelled like body sweat.

It was horrific. That's what you want for everyone?

I was at a privately run care facility, where the carpets were perfect, the place was clean, and it looked a bit worse than a Red Roof Inn. But the staff was friendly and helpful, and the patients were actually taken care of.

At the gov-home, the patients wandered around falling over, and were pretty much left to their own. I had the nurse tell me when I was leaving, to make sure to turn around and shut the door behind me, because some of the patients would follow me to my car, and sure enough on the way out some guy was following right behind me, and there was no staff around to stop him. If I hadn't shut the door behind me, he'd be getting in my car.

That's your system at work. That's your ideology failing people.

My system is the one listed above, where people are taken care of. Ronald Reagan was right. The soviet union, and your 'social care' system has failed every time it's tried.

My system has worked every time it's tried.

They can't leave and choose another They are either intellectually disabled or mentally ill. Something that just kind of goes right over your head. Don't kid yourself, the Democrats are heavily involved in profiteering as well.

Nowhere in the nursing home industry is the corruption, patient neglect and abuse and Medicare and Medicaid fraud more blatant than within the giant nursing home chain of Beverly Enterprises. Based in Fort Smith, it reportedly operates more than 400 nursing facilities, assisted living centers and hospices in 23 states and the District of Columbia.

The chain was supposedly sold a few months back, but a little digging under the layers of the conglomerate would probably find Beverly in there somewhere.

As far back as October 18, 1986, the New York Times reported a Beverly settlement with the State Department of Health Services, with an agreement to pay more than $600,000 in civil penalties as the result of an investigation of several of the company's California facilities. The agreement stated that no new licenses would be issued to Beverly for a 14-month period.

However, this comment by Beverly CEO, Robert Van Tuyle, at the time is comforting. He told the Times, "the state allegations of deaths related to patient care had not been proved," and that "the incidents were isolated cases."

Jumping forward to February 2001, the US Justice Department's San Francisco office and the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, announced the largest settlement ever for fraud in a nursing home case.

It said Beverly Enterprises Inc., the parent company of Beverly Healthcare, the nation's largest nursing home chain, has agreed to pay a civil settlement fine of $170 million and to relinquish control of 10 nursing homes in California. Their subsidiary, Beverly-California, will pay a $5 million criminal fine settlement.

Beverly-California pleaded guilty to one criminal count of fraud and 10 counts of making false statements to Medicare.

A point should be made that the settlement included a corporate integrity agreement that provided for a reporting and compliance program to be overseen by the Office of Inspector General. As part of the agreement, Beverly agreed to insure that its nursing homes complied with all federal regulations including the regulations under the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987 (OBRA)

These OBRA regulations impose numerous requirements on Beverly in its resident care including requirements regarding the following:
(a) Reporting resident injuries of unknown origin to state authorities;
(b) Resident assessment and care planning;
(c) Food services and nutrition;
(d) Diabetes and wound care;
(e) Infection control;
(f) Abuse and neglect policies and reporting procedures; (g) Staffing;
(h) Appropriate drug therapies;
(I) Appropriate mental health services;
(j) Provision of basic care needs;
(k) Incontinence care;
(l) Resident rights and restraint use;
(m) Activities of daily living care;
(n) Therapy services;
(o) Quality of life, including accommodation of needs and activities; and
(p) Assessment of patient competence to make treatment decisions.

A review of the continuous train of charges against Beverly in the years following the signing of the integrity agreement proves that the document was a complete waste of tax dollar funded clerical resources.

Five months after it was signed, in July 2001, the Associated Press reported that the nation's largest operator of nursing homes will pay $1.2 million to settle a racial discrimination lawsuit. Nine former workers claimed that black employees were harassed and subjected to discrimination and racial slurs at the Bridgeton Nursing Center in north St. Louis County, which Beverly owned at the time.

Beverly Enterprises - Poster Child Of Fraud And Neglect In Nursing Home Industry

Articles about Beverly Enterprises - latimes

Either way, it has shifted again and would be in line with what I first posted.

Beverly and Fraud

Your failure to recognize what is happening currently is hindering progress. Fact is, I could lay every medicaid/medicare fraud in the mental health sector, every for profit nursing home death and every mentally ill killer on you and tell you to own it and be 100% correct by your own standards. It's unproductive as hell. The reality is that the private sector has failed miserably.

If you aren't smart enough to pull an article from 1984 and recognize the doctors are telling you that you have people that should never have been released into society then you aren't smart enough to solve the problems. If you aren't smart enough to recognize the population we are talking about isn't equipped to make decisions taking their business elsewhere then you aren't smart enough to tackle the problem. If you aren't smart enough to recognize the closing of beds in acute psych wards then you aren't smart enough to focus on the problem.

And that is ok. For you this had nothing to do with solving the issues. It was about you thumping your chest and screaming free market.

You will not waste my time again. We are done here.

First, if it's medicare and medicaid.... this inherently it isn't a private system.

You are looking at well known fraud problems, and quality problems in the Medicare and Medicaid system, and claiming it's a problem of privatization? What part of the Federal Medicare and Medicaid program is "private" in your book?

I said Free-market capitalism. That's what I meant. There is no taxing working people, to pay for health care, in free-market capitalism.

You want to try to fix your screwed up socialist system? By all means. Haven't seen a single example yet, where it's worked.

Ex-psychiatric patient speaks of repeated abuse - BBC News

Massive abuse and fraud in UK mental health wards.

Can't blame private companies and blaw blaw blaw this time. No excuse making for you here. Entirely owned and operated by the government, with the exact same problems. Shocking.