More Lies and Deception from AHCA

The Nursing Home lobby does not want typical Americans to know about the protected and isolated world inside the nursing homes and other institutions. Nursing Homes lie to Americans because they know that most will put little time in exploring what life is really like inside institutions. In November when Harriet McBryde-Johnson wrote of her first-hand experience and fear of the nursing home industry, the Nursing Home Lobby responded with a deceptive letter intended to mislead Americans. [Read: Lies and Deception from the Nursing Home Industry]

AHCA uses misrepresentation as a tool because they know that most Americans have little first-hand knowledge of life in a nursing home. They repeat the mantra of untruths to deflect criticism from the mass of Americans that think of the nursing home as a necessary evil. Evil, yes; but a needed option of last resort. The industry knows that it does not have to deal with the nearly universal view that institutions are repulsive, if they convince people that realistic alternatives do not exist.

Consider, for example, the nursing home lobbies Issue Brief on MiCASSA. In the second paragraph AHCA suggests that “some people with disabilities” cannot receive services in home and community settings. In the same paragraph they state: “it is important to preserve their choice regarding where they receive services.”

What choice?

Choice is a critical to the nursing home lobbies misdirection, because choice is specifically what the institution will be taking away. Not just the choice of what you eat, if you bathe and when you go to bed; but choice of how long-term care funding is spent. Medicaid bias has made institutions a requirement, while alternatives are optional. US states; therefore, must offer institutional long-term care, while options and choices are discretionary and vulnerable to state spending cuts.

Actually, choice is the enemy of the Nursing Home Industry. Do you want to live in a nursing home? What child will say about their parent, “we had plenty of choices, but mom liked the nursing home best.” The Nursing Home lobby deceptively speaks of “choice,” while actively working to remove choices from consideration.

AHCA misleadingly uses the idea of choice in their opposition to MiCASSA. The AHCA brief implies that they support legislation “that would best serve all people with disabilities to choose where they live and receive services.” Of course it is the nursing home that has the choice to refuse service to many people. A majority of nursing homes in this country will not provide care to ventilator users.

At the top of the list of lies are that nursing homes provide 24-hour care. They do not. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that nursing home residents received less than 3 hours of direct care a day.

The nursing home industry mistakenly relates, “care” with “captivity.” Nursing homes create passive confinement by only providing services on their premises. This covert imprisonment creates a focus on the facility rather than the individual needs of the inhabitants. Captivity is a good description of what the Nursing Home Industry has done with our long-term care funding. AHCA, the nursing home industries lobby, works very hard to keep Medicaid money flowing to facilities, regardless of the individual choices of the residents.

Tim Wheat

Also read: Lies and Deception from the Nursing Home Industry