Today, when my wife and I went to a nursing home to visit our son, another patient's family said good by to us and to our son. Their mother was leaving. They explained that her insurance would no longer cover her stay at the facility, and the family could not pay the $13,000.00 or more per month to keep her there. It was another sad story about our medical system in our country. no money or insurance no care. Of course, you can give up all of your assets and go on Medicaid and hope your level of care is sufficient.
It hit me hard today to see this family suffer through this and at the same time know that our WV Governor had just announced that he was selling 4 state run medical facilities including a nearby nursing home to New York investors looking for a profitable investment. This has been happening for many years now and the once state hospital and county hospitals both have been turned over to for profit companies. It is not just West Virginia doing this but most of the medical facilities and practices in this country. So, you not only have to pay for your medical services but a little more for the companies to turn a profit. The era of a private physician is long gone and far between as most have let for profit corporations take over and hire them. They are provided with the facilities required to practice and the corporation profits from their patient fees.
It is not hard to calculate the difference between non-profit and for profit. Prices have to raise, and services have to be cut. We can thank our esteemed politicians that have won elections for this. Something like our city that decided to take the fire department expenses out of their budget and charge a fire fee every year as a separate tax. The money for the fire department in the city budget is now used for something else. The same happened with medical facilities like hospitals and nursing homes. The states, counties and cities removed them from their budgets and sold them to for profit companies. The start of the homeless population was caused when the states removed the psychiatric asylums because of a judge's order to release many of the people in the asylums. They abandoned the asylums but never rebuilt replacements for them to care for the mentally impaired. Many of the homeless we see on the streets today would be cared for by these facilities had then been rebuilt and changed their practices to conform with the rulings handed down. There was never any explanation of what happened to money that had been budgeted for the old asylum system. It had been used for another politician's pet project and the mentally ill were left out in the cold to fend for themselves.
We live in a country that has fostered many welfare systems and even now many people are living on government checks but the same elected officials that have allowed this and further to give illegal aliens free housing and medical care, have ignored the needs of the old and infirm and the mentally ill so they can fund pet projects that help very few. It is shameful to see people living on the street or as today a family being turned away from a nursing home because they could not pay the enormous amount of money required. We are supposed to be the richest country in the world but that doesn't include everyone for which i am ashamed.
(30)