Obama Discovers More Than One Way to Kill Elderly: Shut Down Nursing Homes

October 6, 2009 (LPAC)—The entire national system of 16,000 nursing homes, which house close to 1.9 million people, is on the edge of collapse. Although the immediate trigger of the crisis is depression-driven cutbacks in reimbursements to nursing homes from Medicare and Medicaid—even before Obama's Nazi IMAC board is implemented—the actually underlying cause is the total shift in "social standard" that was introduced after FDR's death, where productive American households (including community care for their elderly) were replaced with the insanity of globalization, as Lyndon LaRouche explained in remarks reported in the lead of this briefing.

Last week, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) enacted a Medicare rate adjustment that cuts an estimated $16 billion in nursing home funding over the next 10 years, on top of state-level cuts from Medicaid. In 2008, Medicaid payments by states to nursing homes already fell short by $12 per patient per day—nearly $4.2 billion in un-reimbursed costs for Medicaid- allowed expenses, according to the AHCA (American Health Care Association).

"We're really teetering on the edge of what we see as the collapse of the long-term care system," Deborah Chernoff, spokeswoman for District 1199 of the New England Health Care Employees Union in Connecticut, told AP. Eli Feldman, CEO of the Metropolitan Jewish Health System in New York City, reported that his company had to lay off about 200 of its 1,000 employees at three nursing homes in Brooklyn, because the state cut Medicaid funding by 10%-14%. Said Feldman: "We understand there's a recession/depression, but this is not health reform ... and the victims are basically the people who live in the facilities. The Legislature basically says, 'Too sick, too old, too bad."

LaRouche observed: "What you're seeing now is a Malthusian process which is coming to the acutely Malthusian phase, right now with this crisis."