Monday, September 24, 2007

POLITICS - How Big Business Really Cares About People

"More Profit and Less Nursing at Many Homes" by Charles Duhigg, New York Times

Excerpt

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.

Yap. Profits before people, the GOP mantra.

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