LAWRENCE — Dee Miller has to make an “awful” decision.
The Lawrence resident’s disabled husband of 57 years needs more intensive care than an in-home service is able to provide. But profit-driven assisted living facilities in the area will only accept him if he can pay an estimated $11,000 per month out of pocket for two years, Miller said. As a Medicaid patient, the facilities would place him on an indefinite waiting list.
She would have to sell their home to cover the cost and find a place for herself to live.
“What is an average person supposed to do?” Miller asked last month at a forum hosted by Kansas Advocates for Better Care.
In an interview, Miller said her husband is paraplegic and suffers severe neurological pain. The couple are 78 and 79 years old.
“Many people all over this area that you know are going to be running into the same thing,” she said.
She added: “It’s just a really bad situation.”
MILLER’S SITUATION is emblematic of broader concerns outlined by panelists during the forum. They described a long-term care industry geared toward maximizing profits without regard for human suffering, and a Republican-controlled Legislature unwilling to interfere with “free market” greed.
Janis DeBoer, a former deputy secretary of the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, joined Camille Russell, a former Kansas long-term care ombudswoman, and Kansas Rep. Susan Concannon, a Beloit Republican who declined to seek reelection this year after serving six terms.
DeBoer, whose career in long-term care spanned three decades, said it has always been a challenge to find quality care in nursing homes in Kansas.
“Staffing levels have always been difficult. Pay has been too low. The competition sometimes has been too great,” DeBoer said. “The fact that nobody wants your business, period. I mean, nobody really wants to go to a nursing facility, and yet you offer it because you can make money at it. Let’s just be frank. You can make plenty of money in the nursing facility business as a general rule.”
Russell pointed to a report on federal ratings that showed 80 out of 300 nursing homes in Kansas are considered “problem facilities.” That number was “generous,” she said, meaning there are problems with many more.
If you looked at customer satisfaction, Russell said, few would say their nursing home was good.
She said an estimated 13,000 early deaths per year could be attributed to inadequate staffing in nursing homes nationwide. A new rule from President Joe Biden’s administration would impose higher staffing requirements within three years. That means nearly 40,000 people could die before the requirement is in place, she said. And many more will suffer.
“What about the multitude of people who are living in misery, with abuse and neglect of not having adequate staffing?” Russell said. “These people are making money. This is a profit center, and they are making profits while their customers are in misery, being abused, neglected and dying.”
