Housely and Benson did right by pressing against the inertia of business as usual among those entrusted with care for those unable to fully care for themselves.
With the Reaper reaping, who has proposed anything resembling decent reforms for this growing industry segment? What's the fix? Hand wringing and keening does little. Action - reform - is what's needed.
Figure that out, folks. Warehousing the old folks might not be all that hot an idea. Concentrating the susceptible into situations where infectious disease spread can hit concentrated populations who collectively are highly at risk individuals is proving questionabe. What's the answer? Something aside from housing elderly all together where "efficiency" favors big populous facilities just might be dumb despite the profit-making lure of such an answer. Politicians should posture less and work harder.
Boomers should be most concerned. They're next.
___________UPDATE___________
Strib, Sunday, May 3, carries an AP feed headlined, "Faced with 20,000 dead, care homes seek shield from lawsuits." As a child playing the Monopoly game I soon learned the value of the get out of jail free card.
Strib, mid-item, in paragraphs touching a Cuomo New York liability-lifting legal setup posts:
While the law covering both hospital and nursing care workers doesn’t cover intentional misconduct, gross negligence and other such acts, it makes clear those exceptions don’t include “decisions resulting from a resource or staffing shortage.”
Cuomo’s administration said the measure was a necessary part of getting the state's entire health care apparatus to work together to respond to the crisis.
“It was a decision made on the merits to help ensure we had every available resource to save lives,” said Rich Azzopardi, a senior advisor to Cuomo. “Suggesting any other motivation is simply grotesque.”
Nationally, the lobbying effort is being led by the American Health Care Association, which represents nearly all of the nation’s nursing homes and has spent $23 million on lobbying efforts in the past six years.
Grab onto that very first paragraph. These are often multi-state for-profit business ventures, bottom-line oriented, where any fool of a bean counter can tell you, underspending on supplies and staffing - goods and services, if you think that way - is a way to boost the bottom line, profit being what is left after expenses are subtracted from income, and lessening expenses in commerce with a set income means bigger profits.
So, gross abuse, make them insure against that - it is so politically sensible the lobbyists recognize that line. However, letting the industry off the hook if compromising upon the industry's sole raison d'etre, provision of reasonably expected credible levels of care - what's expected within the public's mind, is mind-boggling. Yet profiteering as much as feasible no matter what is NOT a good thing to lobby for or grant. Corner cutting simply is too attractive a business venturing incentive to be tolerated, much less made a liability-free option; a go for the gold incentive even toward shoddy and inadequate practices. Faulty goods and services below the reasonable public's expectation must not be hidden or tolerated in allowing escape from liability for "decisions resulting from a resource or staffing shortage," where "SHORTAGE" can be as now resulting from inadequate pandemic planning and funding by government, or in other settings from a decision to compromise in search of greater profit.
The pandemic is a problem, but let's not make it an excuse, one reaching even to normal operating times.