Scam 1992 Quotes

Another example, one that touches more people, is the nursing home industry. Numerous studies have shown that living at home, in a house or an apartment, is better psychologically, more fulfilling, and cheaper than living in nursing homes.14 Yet these institutions prosper when federal programs that foster living in the community are cut. There are also funding disincentives that the U.S. Congress, through Medicare and Medicaid, has created to ensure the profit bonanza of nursing homes. According to the activist disability journal Mouth (1995), there are 1.9 million people with disabilities living in nursing homes at an annual cost of $40,784, although it would cost only $9,692 a year to provide personal assistance services so the same people could live at home. Sixty-three percent of this cost is taxpayer funded. In 1992, 77,618 people with developmental disabilities (DD) lived in state-owned facilities at an average annual cost of $82,228, even though it would cost $27,649 for the most expensive support services to live at home. There are 150,257 people with mental illness living in tax-funded asylums at an average annual cost of $58,569. Another 19,553 disabled veterans also live in institutions, costing the Veterans Administration a whopping $75,641 per person.15 It is illogical that a government would want to pay more for less. It is illogical until one studies the amount of money spent by the nursing home lobby. Nursing homes are a growth industry that many wealthy people, including politicians, have wisely invested in. The scam is simple: get taxpayers to fund billions of dollars to these institutions which a few investors divide up. The idea that nursing homes are compassionate institutions or necessary resting places has lost much of its appeal recently, but the barrier to defunding them is built on a paternalism that eschews human dignity. As we have seen with public housing programs in the United States, the tendency is to warehouse (surplus) people in concentrated sites. This too has been the history with elderly people and people with disabilities in nursing homes. These institutions then can serve as a mechanism of social control and, at the same time, make some people wealthy.