Vulture capitalists milk Medicare and Medicaid money
By Scott
Doerr
As private equity takes over more nursing care, studies show
higher mortality rates, reduced staffing, and increased costs as a result. But
seniors are fighting back.
I live in Lincoln County, Wisconsin. For generations, our
public nursing home — Pine Crest — has served our seniors. “Pine Crest is there
for us when we need it. It’s worked that way for 70 years,” said retired
accountant and Pine Crest Nursing Home volunteer Eileen Guthrie.
Eileen and I were among the concerned locals who tirelessly
fought to keep our five-star-rated home
in public hands when the county board put it up for sale to the highest bidder.
Few wanted to privatize our beloved county-owned institution, which always
treated residents with love and respect. Privatizing it would turn us into
expendable cogs in the wheel for greater profits.
Despite broad public opposition, the county board sold Pine
Crest to a subsidiary of the Ensign Group, a for-profit company. Almost
immediately, the harm started. Less than a month after the sale, state
regulators cited the
nursing home for neglecting a patient’s medication needs, sending that person
to the hospital, and reducing the necessary staff.
Since 2016, there have been 125 publicly-owned nursing home
sales to private companies in Wisconsin. In nearly half of these, the federal
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) quality ratings declined after
the sale.
That tracks with what
communities have seen nationally.
The Center for Medicare Advocacy has found that “promised
cost savings rarely materialized” when communities privatized public nursing
homes, “while accountability and public oversight were significantly
reduced,” the Daily
Yonder reported. And the Kaiser Family Foundation has found that
privatized nursing homes nationwide tend to have lower-quality ratings than
those that are publicly owned.
Today about 70 percent of nursing homes are for-profit. Corporate chains own 60 percent of these, with private equity owning 11 percent and rising. This is a disservice to our aging population and to our communities — and recent legislation could make it worse.
The GOP’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” cut $1 trillion
from Medicaid to finance tax cuts for the wealthy, putting more than 300 rural
hospitals at “immediate
risk” of closing. The bill’s limitations on hospital provider taxes further
reduce critical Medicaid financing, threatening nursing care and long-term care
as well.
Medicaid’s Home
and Community-Based Services (HCBS) program, which seniors and people
with disabilities rely on, faces acute threats. States grappling with the
historic Medicaid cuts will see optional HCBS funding as the first place to
cut spending. Cuts in federal matching grants further reduce funding.
The privatization of Pine Crest and these tragic Medicaid
cuts are part of the same story. Our communities have built public, quality
institutions over decades, operating on thin margins so that our people are the
priority. But now that tax cuts for the rich and windfalls for private
corporations are taking priority over care, we’re the ones left holding the
bag.
While our community didn’t stop the sale in the end, we did
raise awareness about the need to put people over profit. I even ran for and
won a seat on the Lincoln County Board so I could more directly push the board
to represent people, not corporate power.
If enough of us do this in our communities, we may just save
millions of lives. When we fight together, we win.
Scott
Doerr is a concerned citizen and a member of the county board in Lincoln
County, Wisconsin. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
