Guardianship in Massachusetts “Medical Kidnapping” – an Attorney’s Accounts and her Subsequent Suspension

Attorney Lisa Siegel Balanger, Health Impact News – suspended for 2 years for speaking out

Note to Reader: Lisa Siegel Belanger, the attorney who should be honored for her courage has been suspended for two (2) years. Why? She and her sister wanted to get her father out of the Massachusettes Guardianship system. On the bright side, they did not have the same leverage, a Bar license, to use against her sister. Please read the story. Please also note that Netflix removed her story. That said, “I CARE A LOT” tells the same story.

The real perpetrators of elder abuse & exploitation: Medical kidnapping by state public officials

by Lisa Siegel Belanger, Esq.
Health Impact News

More than 30 years ago, throughout the United States, state governments created agencies known as “elder protective services.”

As seen by such designated titles, these agencies are made to appear as though state governments are helpful resources for citizens.

However, nothing could be further from the truth.

These so-called protective agencies are, in fact, wolves in sheep’s clothing that I can attest to from not only my direct personal experiences, but also from years of research.

Details of my family’s ongoing travesty of justice can be found at FreeMarvin.com. (See also: Massachusetts Senior Citizen and Attorney Medically Kidnapped – Estate Plundered – Represents National Epidemic.)

Upon years of my reviewing and obtaining voluminous court documentation throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts—particularly, in my professional experience as an attorney, there is no doubt, whatsoever, that public officials have been operating a racketeering enterprise through the probate and family courts, feeding off our most vulnerable citizens, the elderly.

These public officials do so through physical and financial exploitation of the elderly. [1]

In 2015, I filed a federal civil action in the District Court of Massachusetts providing overwhelming and irrefutable documentation that state elder protective agencies is one cog of many in a long-embedded governmental money laundering and embezzlement enterprise.

“Adult/elder protective services” is a money-making industry, which should set off nonstop warning bells to the public—especially, given the revelation of the magnitude of absolute corruption by government officials with hard cold supporting indisputable facts to the credit of our 45th President Donald J. Trump. (Editor’s note – See:  National Health Care Fraud Takedown Results in Charges Against Over 412 Individuals Responsible for $1.3 Billion in Fraud Losses – Largest Health Care Fraud Enforcement Action in Department of Justice History.)

As laid out in my 2015 federal racketeering complaint, illicit monies are funneled through kickbacks arising from prescribed medications (especially antipsychotics) and fraudulent billings for Medicare & Medicaid services.

The indisputable fact is that these state “protective” agencies have a financial incentive to unlawfully initiate court proceedings in the Probate & Family Courts to have our family members judicially declared wards of the state.

For example, Medicaid services are reimbursable for “all of the activities involved in an APS (Adult protective services) investigations of allegations of abuse.” [2]

The Medicaid program process is called Administrative Claiming. For “non-providers,” funds for APS investigations are provided by Title XIX Medicaid Administration.

UNDER SEC. 2042. [42 U.S.C. 1397m-1], Social Security also provides funds specific to investigating reported elder abuse via the Department of Health & Human Services. In 2011, $3 million dollars from Social Security was funded for “investigative” services, and $4 million each year from 2012-2014.

As evidenced,

medical providers and nonmedical entities receive kickbacks for the mere reporting of elder abuse.

Add to that, medical providers have even more of a financial incentive to facilitate reports of elder abuse where they have a subsequent and additional steady stream of income to be made through providing medical services.

The way to keep that continuous flow of income, people are involuntarily forced into the Probate & Family Courts by state “protective” agencies where they ensue formal court proceedings to declare people “wards of the state” upon which they are then routinely admitted into rehabilitation and/or nursing home facilities against their will.

This is all facilitated by elders being judicially determined to be “incapacitated.”

As shown, the medical community works hand-in-hand with judges and attorneys of the Probate & Family courts to literally abduct our family members by design for pure greed.

These public officials use these court proceedings to do so by claimed “mental health” issues and/or physical illness. Through the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) own published reports, state agencies guised as “protective services” have an established pattern of profiting from dismantling the family unit for more than 30 years nationwide.

Once elders are officially deemed “wards of the state” by Probate & Family Court judges, due to state protective agencies use to hook their claws into our family members, the governmental reign of terror is embedded through these judges appointing guardians and conservators to take absolute control over “the ward.”

At that point, the elder is then stripped of all individual freedoms, including personal decisions involving medical, financial or otherwise.

There is an irrefutable and well-documented pattern of court appointed guardians isolating the ward from family and friends, so as to facilitate involuntary drugging of the ward with antipsychotics and other Big-Pharma medications through subterfuge with the ultimate objective of liquidating the elder’s estate and to use the elder as a means to funnel funds via kickbacks and Medicare & Medicaid fraud.

Do NOT Call Elder Abuse “Hotlines”!

Even more alarmingly, for decades, state Attorney General Offices have continuously bombard citizens with “public service announcements” urging citizens to call “hot lines” to report abuse of elders.

Often times these calls to “elder abuse” hot lines are made “anonymously” with obvious underlying ill-motives, while other citizens are conned into thinking that they are going to be provided help to keep their family unit together when the state government has an established blatant and flagrant pattern of doing the exact opposite—they overtly seek to dismantle the family unit.

Showing the true motives of the offices of the Attorney Generals, they disturbingly blast a narrative that the majority of elder exploitation supposedly occurs by family members. For example, see: [SOURCE REMOVED]

Established evidence shows that governmental abduction of family members involves all ages, all socio-economic backgrounds, and all ethnicities.

My family’s personal miscarriage of justice is a prime example that no one is beyond the clutches of this long-embedded systemic criminal enterprise.

Overwhelming court documentation shows that due process for accused family members is nonexistent.

In fact, it is business as usual for these public officials to fabricate and manufacture information to abduct our family members.

Don’t make the tragic mistake of thinking that state governmental medical kidnapping can’t happen to YOUR family.

Some short & fast tips to help avoid state governmental intrusion into your family:

• Do not initiate any proceeding in the probate & family court system
• Do not use services offered by state protective services
• Do not use services offered by local municipal organizations claiming to help the elderly, such as Council of Aging
• Do not call Abuse Hotlines
• Do not attend “free” publicly offered estate planning seminars

Seemingly, it is human nature for people to want to avoid horrifying topics of conversation like medical kidnapping—not wanting to even conceive of the thought that this could happen to their family.

People tend to bury their heads in the sand, but in reality, such reflex worsens the problem.

A unified and cohesive movement by we, citizens, for accountability, is so needed where the insidiousness in which governmental medical kidnapping is so deep. If not now, when?

Comment on this article at MedicalKidnap.com.

bout the Author

Lisa Siegel Belanger, Esq.

Education: Massachusetts School of Law, J.D.; Emerson College, M.A. in Communications; University of Massachusetts at Amherst, B.B.A. in Finance. bar admissions

Bar Admissions: Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts; U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts; United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit; United States Supreme Court.

Belanger Law Office

People’s Center for Law & Justice

Adult Medical Kidnapping Stories

References

[1]  Belanger v. BNY Mellon et al. U.S. District Court of Massachusetts Docket No. 1:15cv10198-ADB http://www.belangerlawoffice.com/free-marvin/federal-civil-action-2015/

[2] National Adult Protective Services Association, APS Administrator Briefing Paper: Alternate Sources of Funding for APS Programs, prepared by Karl urban for the NAPSA Policy Committee (2015)

MASSACHUSETTS BOARD OF BAR EXAMINERS INFORMATION:

https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5e9435324653d0752bc96c0f

Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers v. Belanger

Plaintiff:	Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers
Defendant:	Lisa Siegel Belanger
Case Number:	1:2020cv10445
Filed:	March 4, 2020
Court:	US District Court for the District of Massachusetts
Presiding Judge:	Indira Talwani
Nature of Suit:	Other Statutory Actions
Cause of Action:	28:1446
Jury Demanded By:	None

 RSS Track this DocketDocket Report

From Boston Broadside

It’s All True: “I Care a Lot”… You Really Do Not Care. Guardianship, Nursing Homes and Covid-19

Dear Reader:

Anyone familiar with this blog knows that the cornerstone of the Lost Messiah blog has been, from its inception, the deplorable condition of nursing homes and the abuses of patients within those homes. And the fact that so many of them are run by Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox Jews just makes it worse.

Judaism is founded on the principle of humanity, the sanctity of life, charity and human decency. To criticize the ownership of these nursing homes is not to be anti-Semitic. It is to have a conscience. Anyone not critical of the deplorable condition within many of the country’s nursing homes, New York’s response to Covid-19, the lack of Federal oversight of nursing homes, the endless flow of money from nursing home magnates to politicians and/or to judges and/or to doctors and hospitals and social workers and guardians is to be in my mind, blind or morally bankrupt. That is a full stop.

It was not until recently that I learned to understand the magnitude of the nursing home problem when factoring in guardianship. I did not know. Now that I do, I am just sad. I have seen for myself how it all plays out and it is devastating. Social workers in hospitals are paid to call attention to patients who provide easy targets for guardians, doctors are paid to provide diagnoses like Alzheimer’s, behavioral maladies, mental incapacity or other conditions. Judges are either blindly trusting of guardians or believing of what they are told or are part of the system that awards custody to guardians. Guardians stick patients into nursing homes with which they are connected. When all else fails, or a lawyer willing to stick a thorn in someone’s side comes in, Patient Care Intake Reports are tailored to direct the ward into a particular nursing home usually the one that is in some way connected to the guardian, whether through ownership or a system of payments. Either the ward has problems that the unconnected home cannot handle or the ward’s insurance is not the right kind. It’s all in the narrative. Many guardians are connected to some of the most deplorable nursing homes; and it is to those homes that some proudly send their wards. In other words, they are paid to fill a bed and reward the elderly cash-cow with confinement. It’s all in a day’s work. And it should be noted, the financial connections are publicly available in most states albeit hard to find.

The pockets are so well lined and the wheels are turning constantly, a well oiled corrupt and broken system. The flow of money is a steady stream. The process has been worked out to the most fundamental, almost atomic levels. Politicians are provided with hefty donations. In New York Judges are elected, they too benefit from the donations they receive. The methods of trying to get someone out of guardianship or out of a deplorable nursing home, one in which a ward is placed by a court appointed guardian runs slowly, if at all. So while the system of harming the elderly runs smoothly, the possibility of a correction saunters along at a snail’s pace.

Judges frequently accept the words of guardians at face value, even when it should be apparent that the guardians are dishonest (to put it mildly). Court appointed attorneys, many of them, have been a cog in the wheel of the system for so long that they do not even know the system is broken, or alternatively, they are part of the influencers helping to create certainty that the system will keep running, and…. unencumbered.

Covid-19 has made the problems that much worse. Patients in nursing homes cannot get visitors. There is no oversight, none. The foxes run the henhouses. And the money flows…

The movie “I Care a Lot” a controversial work of art in my opinion, does not delve deeply enough into the abuses of the elderly within the guardianship structure. It does not approach the confounding ability of judges to turn their heads as they grant guardianship of healthy people to individuals who, for lack of a better word, traffic in human lives. The system is broken. From where I sit, it might only work if guardians are rewarded for setting people who do not need their assistance free. Pay someone a ransom, of sorts. Indeed, there are people who need help, need someone to watch over them; and there are perhaps guardians who really care, for whom money is not the ultimate goal. If so, they the unicorns.

But without attention, oversight, accountability and a complete overhaul, the system will keep running. There is simply too much money involved. A human being is worth thousands. And “I Care a Lot” should be teaching legislators, both state and federal a very important lesson: the system needs to be torn down and rebuilt. The guardians need to be stopped. The nursing homes need to be held accountable.

The elderly caught in the system are being abused, treated like animals. Many would have more rights if they attacked their captors and wound up in jail. It is simply a sick reality.

And attorneys who might be helpful in the area of setting people free have the threat of disbarment personal harm hanging over their heads. The system is broken. Without tearing it down, it likely will not get fixed.

Netflix “I Care a Lot”

I Care a Lot

2021 | R | 1h 58m | Dark ComediesA court-appointed legal guardian defrauds her older clients and traps them under her care. But her latest mark comes with some unexpected baggage.Starring:Rosamund Pike, Peter Dinklage, Eiza González

It’s payback time for the all-American swindler in Netflix’s ‘I Care a Lot’

You can make a lead character reprehensible — even repellent — and still hold on to an audience, but you’d better not make her dull. “I Care a Lot” is a pitch-black karmic comedy of bad behavior and worse payback; it made a stir at this year’s online Sundance festival and landed unexpectedly on Netflix last week. It features just about the worst person imaginable, a woman who bilks senior citizens out of their life savings by becoming their court-appointed guardian. But in Rosamund Pike’s chilly, hollow central performance you may find it difficult to care at all.

Continue reading in The Boston Globe

Netflix’s ‘I Care a Lot’ should worry you

A stranger knocks on the door. The older woman who answers the door is informed that the visitor is now her legal guardian and will make all decisions for her. Within days, the older woman has been placed in a nursing home and her home sold so that the stranger may profit.

It’s a perfect opening for a psychological thriller. In fact, it is the opening for Netflix’s new featured movie “I Care a Lot,” starring Rosamund Pike as Marla, a ruthlessly ambitious woman who has made a business out of exploiting older adults. Her method: petitioning a local court to appoint her as emergency guardian for older adults whom she alleges cannot make decisions for themselves.  

Unfortunately, the plot of “I Care a Lot” — despite its share of plot twists and theatrics — is not as far-fetched as it might seem. Every state allows courts to appoint a third party (called a “guardian” or “conservator”) to make decisions for someone the court determines is at risk because they lack the ability to make decisions for themselves. The process can provide needed protection to those who are unable to care for themselves. Yet it also has real costs. Not only do individuals for whom guardians are appointed lose the right to make some or nearly all decisions for themselves, but reports of unscrupulous guardians using the system to exploit vulnerable adults are far too common.  

This exploitation is made possible, in part, by outdated state laws. Take Marla’s first “trick:” petitioning for a guardianship without telling her elderly mark. State guardianship laws permit courts to appoint “emergency guardians” without notice to either the person alleged to need a guardian or family or friends who might come to their defense. Even when state laws say that individuals are entitled to notice before a guardian is appointed, courts can (and do) waive giving that notice. And long-term guardians are also routinely appointed without the subject of the proceeding being present in court.  

Continue reading: The Hill

NURSING HOMES:

HHS must investigate alleged Cuomo nursing home deaths cover-up, House Republican urges

EXCLUSIVE – Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., demanded that the Department of Health and Human Services investigate New York nursing home deaths, citing the state attorney general’s report that Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration may have undercounted nursing home coronavirus deaths by as much as 50%.

Fox News

Nursing Homes, Once Hotspots, Far Outpace U.S. in Covid Declines

Throughout the pandemic, there has been perhaps nowhere more dangerous than a nursing home. The coronavirus has raced through some 31,000 long-term care facilities in the United States, killing more than 163,000 residents and employees and accounting for more than a third of all virus deaths since the late spring.

But for the first time since the American outbreak began roughly a year ago — at a nursing care center in Kirkland, Wash. — the threat inside nursing homes may have finally reached a turning point.

Continue reading in The New York Times

COUNTERPOINT:

Ignore the movies; guardians really do care a lot | Opinion

Nurse Ratched does not reflect the caring, self-sacrificing nursing profession. Richard Gere’s nefarious legal tactics in “Chicago” would get a real attorney disbarred. Steve Martin’s sadistic, nitrous-oxide-huffing Orin Scrivello in “Little Shop of Horrors” is certainly not representative of the dental profession. Similarly, Pike’s portrayal of guardianship is a performance designed to engage viewers and generate an emotional response, but it is not rooted in reality. All of these are examples of art created to tug at viewers’ emotions to make the respective films more captivating.

SunSentinel Opinion Piece

A “Bucket List” President Biden, Demand Nursing Home Transparency and Accountability by Owners and Operators

As our regular readers know, the lack of accountability of nursing home owners and operators is one of our central focuses. If this blog could solve just one problem on the “Bucket List” it would be improving the quality of care for our nation’s elderly and infirmed and ending the associated fraud scheme that makes neglect profitable.

As a single example, the pardon of Philip Esformes was a travesty of justice and a slap in the face of every elderly resident who suffered in his nursing homes, and a disregard for the taxpayers who fund Medicare and Medicaid. The lack of transparency and accountability fosters an environment fraud and neglect and likely President Trump and members of his party benefited from the pardon.

Owners and operators should not be able to deny accountability when their patients die of Covid-19. In many cases, the deaths were the result of lacking staff, rationing of PPP and profit. Many of the owners and operators of some of the worst homes had a “last clear chance” to add safety measures (though that is not generally the standard of care used).

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought years and years of neglect within nursing care to the surface. This is nothing new. These homes have been historically understaffed and many of them are not strangers to subpar care. Death is harder to hide than neglect, though many continue to hide their mortality rates.

Nursing home owners and operators should not be allowed hidden protections of LLC’s, foundations, trusts and other corporate structures, to either prevent a cross referencing of ownership for licensure purposes or to manipulate the math when homes go sideways. There must be complete transparency and personal accountability and liability.

The ownership of many of the most deplorable homes is difficult to decipher and cross reference. Many of the worst run homes have a joint group of owners some of which are comprised of attorneys and other professionals with different percentages throughout each of the cross-owned homes. First, owners and operators who are also licensed professionals should be held to higher standards of care or some form of specific registration should be in place that distinguishes these professional-owned homes from others. Second, their professional licenses should be at risk when they fail to provide adequate care. Third, professional firms that have partners who own and operate nursing homes should not be permitted to donate to political or judicial candidates or campaigns. Nursing home neglect should not be a lobbying cry. If owners and operators, particularly professional owners and operators can curry favors with politicians and judges, patients are simply not safe.

To the victor goes the spoils and for-profit nursing care is rarely an altruistic endeavor. Humanity should come before profit.

Hypocrisy, No. Cuomo Finally Understanding the Magnitude of Nursing Home Abuse – Covid-19

The New York Post

Holding Nursing Home Magnates to Account for Their Flippant Handling of the Covid-19 Pandemic

From our perspective, it is about time that nursing homes in the State of New York are being held to account for their reporting of nursing home deaths. To this point, many have been poorly managed and the oversight of that management has been staggeringly absent. The reason? Well, Governor Cuomo, Tish James and many political candidates in both parties have nursing home owners, their lawyers, their vendors, their advocates all supporting political campaigns. Either that support comes in the form of direct check-writing or through Super PAC’s, courtesy of Citizen’s United. Trying to hold the same people who got you elected accountable for the horrors within their nursing homes is a risky gamble when it comes to a political future.

And then there are the lobbyists. You know. The ones who lobby the government for leeway, some wiggle room. This applies both to standards of healthcare, or rather, standards of moral human decency and financial accounting methods. That accounting is also Medicaid, Medicare and Private Insurance companies who are being defrauded time and time again. Why they have not thrown the breakers on eludes us.

Esformes – Convicted of one of the Largest Healthcare Frauds in History Gets Sentence Commuted

Dear Reader:

Our theory is that someone in Trump’s government or advisory group is in the process of going into business with Philip Esformes and the commuted sentence helps to facilitate that. Just a theory…

Suffice it to say, we have no other statement than that this is a disgraceful decision. It is everything wrong with the Presidential pardon power and a shining example of Trump’s failures as a human being, setting aside his failures as President. Yes. Some would disagree.

It is hard, however, to make a case for commuting the sentence of Esformes, though some have done it and we question their judgement. It would be like setting Bernie Madoff free. That, at this point, would come as no surprise.

Esformes spent years perfecting the craft of defrauding the healthcare industry and patients in nursing homes paid the price. He is a godless creature of habit and no amount of prayer in our view diminishes the harm he caused to vulnerable people and the healthcare industry at large. This opinion is yet another condemnation of the lack of nursing care oversight in the United States.

We submit that Trump should spend a few months in one of Esformes’ worst homes and see what he thinks afterwards. It could be almost like “Undercover Boss.” Trump would be forced to allow no one to know he is the President and get treated like other patients. If only…

Trump Announces Wave Of Pardons Including Orthodox Jew Phillip Esformes

Philip Esformes – Today, President Trump commuted the term of imprisonment of Philip Esformes, while leaving the remaining aspects of his sentence, including supervised release and restitution, intact.  This commutation is supported by former Attorneys General Edwin Meese and Michael Mukasey, as well as former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson.  In addition, former Attorneys General Edwin Meese, John Ashcroft, and Alberto Gonzalez, as well as other notable legal figures such as Ken Starr, have filed in support of his appeal challenging his conviction on the basis of prosecutorial misconduct related to violating attorney-client privilege.

While in prison, Mr. Esformes, who is 52, has been devoted to prayer and repentance and is in declining health.

To read the article in its entirety in Yeshiva World News, click here.

Nursing Homes and Covid-19, The Dangers, the Money, the Lack of Oversight, Time for Home Care

Dear Reader:

Covid-19 is a pubic health disaster.

But, so too are most nursing homes and rehabilitation centers. Many of them represent the greatest constitutional violation of life, liberty, happiness and dignity for those most vulnerable who are confined to many of the nations homes.

There are very personal reasons why this blogger knows so much about them and their deplorable conditions. Setting aside visits to upwards of 45 different nursing homes and rehabilitation centers throughout New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and being asked to negotiate a bid on Personal Protective Equipment by an unsuspecting client, research on homes and their owners has made the entire industry stomach-turning. That client did not realize at the time that the equipment he was asked to broker had been taken from a nursing home (paid for by Medicare, Medicaid or private insurance) and warehoused in New Jersey. Someone else likely did the deal, the client walked away.

So, perhaps Covid-19 was necessary to open people’s eyes to the dangers of nursing homes and rehabilitation centers and to provide much needed incentive for the government to oversee them with vigor, zeal and a passion that reflects our need to protect the elderly and most vulnerable.

Well, this might just be wishful thinking.

Suffice it to say, most owners and operators are looking to the bottom line. It is about the money, the profit and loss, the quasi virtual auction of human life by social services, guardianship, social workers in hospitals and the individuals that make the wheels of the human life industry turn. Many are morally bankrupt and the more their pockets get lined the more soulless they become.

More to follow. For now, The Wall Street Journal:

U.S.

Covid Spurs Families to Shun Nursing Homes, a Shift That Appears Long Lasting

The pan­demic is re­shap­ing the way Amer­i­cans care for their el­derly, prompt­ing fam­ily de­ci­sions to avoid nurs­ing homes and keep loved ones in their own homes for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and other care.

Amer­i­cans have long re­lied on in­sti­tu­tions to care for the frailest se­niors. The U.S. has the largest num­ber of nurs­ing-home res­i­dents in the world. But fam­i­lies and some doc­tors have been re­luc­tant to send pa­tients to such fa­cil­i­ties, fear­ing in­fec­tion and iso­la­tion in places rav­aged by Covid-19, which has caused more than 115,000 deaths linked to U.S. long-term-care in­sti­tu­tions.

To continue reading in The Wall Street Journal, click here.

ADDITIONAL SOURCES:

COVID-19 spurs families to shun nursing homes in a shift that appears long lasting

“We should be able to provide more services in the home setting that can enable somebody to be independent,” said Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “Covid is going to force a national conversation about how we take care of our elderly, and clearly there are issues in nursing homes that go beyond infection control,” she said.

During his campaign, President-elect Joe Biden promised to spend $450 billion to make sure people who need long-term care can get support in the home and community.

51 lost lives: A portrait of the pandemic’s
tragic toll in America’s nursing homes

They had survived so much already — war and dust storms, cancer and poverty, lost eyesight, lost spouses, lost memories — and still went on to find moments of grace inside the corridors of America’s nursing homes.

In Windsor, Conn., Johnny James ate chocolate bars with his visiting great-grandchildren. In Lewiston, Idaho, Edna McBride celebrated her 100th birthday. In Providence, R.I., Florence Tilles, who had two knee surgeries, liked to joke she would one day die at the 18th hole of her favorite golf course.

One day came on May 30, when 98-year-old Tilles fell victim to covid-19 amid a soaring death toll that included James and McBride and would soon grow to more than 80,000 residents in nursing homes across the country. They suffered alone, in homes locked down to visitors, peering at the masked faces of weary nurses and aides who risked their own lives to be there.

The industry and the government could have done far more, watchdog groups have said from the beginning, shoring up infection-control protocols and staffing, delivering stronger oversight of troubled homes and ensuring that coronavirus stimulus payments reached patients and caregivers rather than corporate owners.

Instead, 10 months later, thousands of families are learning to live without goodbyes.

The 51 residents whose stories are told here, one from every state and the District of Columbia, left behind at least 129 children, 230 grandchildren, 210 great-grandchildren and 41 great-great-grandchildren. Some blame the nursing homes for questionable care. Others say they are enormously grateful for the work of caregivers.

To continue with The Washington Post, click here.

Nursing Homes and their Attorney Owners – Covid-19 and the Staggering Conflicting Interests that Exist – Part I

Law Firms prized for their Knowledge of Elder Care and Novel Approaches to Protecting the Elderly, and the conflicting interests of the Partners and Associates who Own Financial Stakes in Subpar Nursing and Rehabilitation Centers [OPINION]

Dear Reader:

The right to “sepulcher” in the law is the “right of a family member or next of kin to find solace and comfort in the act of burying a loved one.” Protecting this right alone can be the basis for a highly respectable and extremely lucrative boutique practice for attorneys. A lawsuit based upon that right can be relevant in situations where fallen soldiers are not returned home, victims of terrorist attacks are not returned to their families; and during the Covid-19 pandemic, bodies are improperly buried or even lost. A recent example is the case of Elayne Boosler, wherein a family members was buried at the hands of a guardian’s signature in the wrong cemetery at significant cost. That case is eliciting calls for an investigation. Her story is gruesome and complicated by a system of guardianship that itself is enshrouded in secrecy and disenfranchisement.

In the United States many law firms with highly intelligent and respected attorneys and practices focused on elder care, geriatric medical abuses, estate planning, insurance and disability, medical malpractice and related practices, simultaneously represent some of the worst offenders in nursing home care abuses. Many of the partners in these firms also own financial stakes in nursing homes, either with their clients or not. It is our opinion that these are diametrically opposed practices; and it is nearly impossible for a law firm to maintain the integrity of one practice area while being paid millions to represent the others. That is an opinion premised on what may be a debatable notion of ethics and moral integrity.

Admittedly, Covid-19 has created a mitigating factor in recent history. But our opinion is unwavering: the lack of care for the welfare of the elderly, the lack of interest in dignity and humanity has governed, with a wholehearted disregard for humanity, particularly in law firms with competing interests. This has occurred throughout our entire system of care and of justice. With respect to dignified and responsible elder care, the Covid-19 tragedy has denied the right to tens of thousands of families of nursing and rehabilitation homes’ patients to be physically present for their loved ones in life and, in many cases, to bury those same people who have had their lives taken by the virus.

We would argue that the fault lies though not entirely, with the owners and financial stakeholders of many of these nursing homes and rehabilitation centers. We would posit that they did not take proper precautions during the pandemic, choosing instead the path of least cost routing. Precautions would have undermined owners’ bottom lines. We maintain that the owners and operators were looking at their P/L Statements (Profit and Loss), and ignoring the potential loss of human life. Some nursing homes carry life insurance for their patients and are themselves beneficiaries of those policies. They therefore profit whether their wards live or die. This makes the situation all the more unpalatable.

For those owners whose real life profession is an active and lucrative legal practice, one which focuses on elder care, the rights of the elderly, estate planning and healthcare services, in our view there has always been a weighing of financial averages and significant conflicts. Moreover, the pandemic has increased the value of lobbying governments to reduce nursing home and even medical accountability, a conflicting premise if you are an elder care lawyer.

To add another wrench in the cogs of a lucrative attorney practice that plays both the elder care and nursing home ownership game, it is less expensive to lobby the government for Covid-19 related immunity provisions which protect owners (often themselves) from liability than to save lives and actually engage in “elder care.” It is a simple financial calculation. And at the end of the day, the elderly lose and the attorneys win.

A reasonable analogy would be a car company that hides known and foreseeable danger in manufacturing because the cost of reimbursement for the death of drivers and passengers is less expensive than recalling the vehicles in question. The outcome is based upon purely financial decisions which will continue status quo unless and until significant financial accountability is mandated.

In our view, both in the nursing home context and in the vehicle scenario, conscience and morality simply do not a play a role in the decision-making of owners and operators. In both instances manipulating political clout to obliterate the chance for families to seek financial compensation for loss of life or consortium has made and continues to make the most financial sense. In both analogous situations, if the people in charge are not held to account, both civilly and criminally, these financial equations will take precedent over the value of human life and lives will be lost.

And please remember, in the situation where the lawyers are the owners and operators of nursing homes, they make money either way. Their legal representation on behalf of owners generates bills for tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in yearly billables. The nursing home ownership is gravy and the more immunity they obtain for themselves and their clients (who are often partnered with them) from liability the richer the returns on all fronts.

The nagging question is this: how can a law firm, any law firm, simultaneously have a blossoming and distinguished practice of elder care, “rights of sepulchre”, estate planning and other related practice areas and at the same time represent owners of some of the most deplorably run nursing homes in the country? We do not think that it is possible without an inescapable conflict of interest, setting aside the ethical and moral obligations to clients within those practice areas. As a securities matter, we would argue that the LLC interests associated with nursing home ownership represent securities interests and that it should be possible to implicate the SEC and its trading regime. That’s just a thought.