Elder Care Fraud
For-Profit Nursing Homes Should be de-Licensed- The Elderly Need Protection From Quantifiable Valuation Over Humanity!
Dear Reader:
We have been railing about for-profit nursing and rehabilitation facilities for years: when an elder care facility, any version of elder care, is for-profit, there is utter lawlessness. Money flows like water through a sieve, unencumbered by laws or oversight.
A thorough review of the names of for-profit nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities in New York, cross-checked with PPP Loans reveals that many of them (and/or their attorneys) were some of the largest recipients of PPP Loans during the first round of Covid relief. The second round remains to be seen. They will likely be the first to get PPP Loan forgiveness even though many of them did little, or more accurately nothing to protect their employees or their patients. In fact, the word “nothing” here is quite forgiving. It would mean a passive omission, simple apathy.
To put the narrative in a more truthful perspective, many of the for-profit nursing homes fed their own pockets with the Covid-19 funding. That money should have guaranteed staffing but they were underpaying wages or not hiring. And, many of the country’s nursing homes are owned by the same or similar groups of owners, and they actively manipulated and continue to manipulate the system to profit from Covid-19. Yes! To profit!
Many nursing homes (though not all) take out life insurance on their patients with them as beneficiaries of the policy, when the patient signs in. If that patients makes it past 30-days to 60-days depending upon the policy, the death of the patient generates income to the homes. It is a win/win. Well, the insurers are out – but there is little oversight there either. These are small money policies that generally are unregulated by the insurance industry.
LeadingAge, the “elder care facility advocacy group” believes that the failure of many of these homes cannot be fixed by oversight it can only be fixed by adding money. The comments by LeadingAge imply that there is not enough money to help these facilities take appropriate care of their patients. That is a vile and utterly false interpretation of events. The business model is profit above all else. A view from 30,000 feet shows his analysis doesn’t match the math with respect to many, if not all, of the for-profit elder care facilities.
The problem, in this blogger’s humble opinion: YOU CANNOT BUY MORALITY. IF YOU ARE LACKING IN A MORAL COMPASS, THERE IS NO AMOUNT OF MONEY IN THE WORLD THAT WILL FIX THAT. ADDITIONAL MONEY SIMPLY FEEDS THE MONSTER!
The nursing and rehabilitation home industry is a well-played, well-gamed and manipulated system run by super savvy individuals or groups who know how to game every aspect of the operation. Many are partially owned by the attorneys who represent them and some of those attorneys, at least in NY, help decide who runs on political tickets. These “moblike” industry is a web of somewhat incestuous industry connections. The Elder Care Centers will contract out linen and food services to friends, family or even themselves (a rose by any other name…). They buy drugs from distribution or drug companies owned or operated by their friends, colleagues or even their own corporate enterprises who provide a scratch on their proverbial backs. Foodservice is provided by friends, family or interrelated entities. Mobile medicine is provided by interrelated companies.
These facilities use inexpensive sharps for things like insulin and other injectable drugs that often result in more pain to the patient but less pain to the bottom line. Many reuse insulin or other injectable drug vials but charge each patient for their own, sometimes stockpiling the extra meds and sidestepping laws that prevent the reuse of needles or vials. Instead of giving their patients the name-brand drugs they may have used before admission to their facilities, they give them the generics and file claims for name-brand. They often fail to provide necessary services: occupational, speech, physical and other therapies, they claim to provide those services and bill for them; but many of the patients will attest to what they are not getting and therapy is on the top of that list. They charge for doctor’s visits that don’t happen or are substituted by RN’s, NP’s or PA’s so the doctors are often paid multiple times for the same hour in a day – a reward for often misdiagnosing ailments or over-diagnosing meds.
Facilities that have specialized Dialysis centers associated with their services have little reason to protect a diabetic’s kidneys when a slow destruction of the kidneys yields greater profit. Dialysis is far more profitable then kidney treatment and insulin.
These numbers can be obtained for the asking by law enforcement or anyone reading this blog. Nursing homes and rehabilitations centers need strict oversight absent loopholes. For-profit nursing homes need to be de-licensed – all of them. The ownership of the homes is available on public links. The links between owners in different states can be found by cross checking ownership state-by-state. We have done this analysis with respect to about 30 of the largest of the and most mafia-like ownership groups, which, by the way, own some of the country’s worst nursing homes. We are not stating anything that is not otherwise publicly available and we have been making these claims for years.
No one should be listening to the lobbyists. They have an agenda and quality care for elderly and vulnerable individuals is a far too altruistic endeavor. The lobbyists also have skin-in-the-game and it amounts to a fortune!
New York Assembly releases package of nursing home reform bills
The Democratic-led New York state Assembly released a package of nearly 20 nursing home accountability bills Friday, aimed at tightening restrictions on the hundreds of for-profit facilities.
Among the 19 bills is one sponsored by Assembly Health Chair Dick Gottfried (D-Manhattan) that would prohibit the creation of any new for-profit homes and impose a morratorium expanding the capacity of existing homes.
“Lots of people have been discovering that there are enormous problems in our nursing homes. COVID may have brought them to light and made them worse but a lot of us know those problems have been there for many, many, many years,” Gottfried said during Thursday’s remote Joint Legislative Budget Hearing on Health.
He railed against the for-profit industry in an interview later Thursday evening with NY1, arguing those nursing homes often have higher infection rates and instances of bed sores among patients.
“We’re not going to license any more for-profit nursing homes or for-profit beds,” he said. “We should stop the creation of for-profit beds…you should [operate a nursing home] to care for people not because you want to make money.”
Right now, there are 401 for-profit, privately owned nursing homes out of the roughly 619 in the Empire State, according to a January report from the office of state Attorney General Letitia James.
To continue reading in The New York Post
Guardianship in Massachusetts “Medical Kidnapping” – an Attorney’s Accounts and her Subsequent Suspension
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.
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
PE or Publicly Traded Equity Owned Nursing Facilities, Covid-19 And the Profit in Negligence – No Oversight
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Dear Readers:
We will say it once. We can say it 1000 times.
Nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities and elder care institutions are not burdened by appropriate oversight. In reality, they largely report to no one. And, with combined ownership on the real estate side and on the management/operations side in the hands of private equity firms and publicly traded companies, the flow of money is endless and nearly untraceable.
These homes churn owners, in some cases so they can change oversight records, wiping the slate clean when abuse and neglect results in patient death. They collect money from the government in the form of payments, reimbursements and for some even PPP loans or SBA loans, which should trigger government oversight. But sadly oversight is simply in short supply.
And alas, with front-facing ownership changes, history gets scrubbed. It is all a shell game; and one that traffics in human life. With Covid-19, these homes can profit from death.
In many states, the owners of these facilities are largely exempt from liability, even in the case of gross negligence – a highly profitable exemption. And the politicians who have collected donations can look the other way as the owners profit and those most vulnerable die. Humanity be damned.
State Investigating a Nursing Home That Allegedly Kept COVID-Positive Workers on the Job
A nursing assistant at a Prescott nursing home says she was told to continue to work with patients after informing her supervisor that she was symptomatic for COVID-19 — and also after she later tested positive for the disease.
Now, the state is investigating.
The facility, Granite Creek Health and Rehabilitation Center in Prescott, a skilled-nursing facility with more than 100 long-term residents and rehab patients from the local hospital, had been spared until early June from the pandemic. But as certified nursing assistant at the facility told Phoenix New Times, things spiraled out of control quickly after an employee tested positive for the novel coronavirus on June 9.
New Times is not disclosing the name of the worker based on her request for anonymity. Sick with COVID-19 and still trying to beat back the virus in home quarantine, she doesn’t want to return to Granite Creek and doesn’t want publicity.
“The state surveyor told me that they’re keeping my identity secret and calling me by the code name ‘Hero Worker’ LOL,” she wrote in an email on Tuesday. “I am still concerned that it being known that I reported this could affect my ability to find another job once I’m recovered.”
Mike Rasmussen, the facility’s administrator, confirmed on Tuesday that 16 staff members and 25 residents at Granite Creek have tested positive. He acknowledged in an email that the company would allow a COVID-positive staff member to come to work, and might ask but would not require that a sick staff member come to work.
FIGHTING BACK – Pt. 2 – Nursing Home Patients and Their Families, Victims of Abuse, Report and Seek Counsel Representing Victims
Aurora nursing home sued again after resident beats wheelchair-bound 92-year-old woman
Jury awarded other plaintiff beaten by same resident $3.6 million
An Aurora nursing home is being sued for a second time over allegations that a resident with a history of violence continues to injure other residents and that the facility does not have enough staff to properly care for the Alzheimer’s and dementia patients who live there.
The lawsuit filed last week in Arapahoe County District Court accuses Renew Saddle Rock of putting its financial goals over residents’ safety by under-staffing the home.
In October, an Arapahoe County jury awarded a former resident a $3.6 million verdict after he was beaten by a fellow resident, who has been identified as “Anne B.” Two months after the verdict, the nursing home owners changed the facility’s name to Renew Saddle Rock from Peregrine Senior Living at Aurora, the lawsuit said.
The new lawsuit was filed by Denver attorneys Jerome Reinan, Jordana Gingrass and Beth Dombroski on behalf of Joanna Dryva, whose mother, Maria Pallman, was injured in the attack. Dryva is seeking more than $100,000 in damages against Renew and the nursing home’s corporate owners, First Phoenix-Aurora of Wisconsin and Peregrine Management of Colorado.
The latest lawsuit accuses Anne B. of pummeling Pallman, a 92-year-old, wheelchair-bound woman who also suffers from dementia. On May 29, Anne B. hit Pallman in the face as she sat in a wheelchair in a hallway, the lawsuit said. Pallman now suffers from anxiety, and recurring headaches that she didn’t have before the assault, the lawsuit said.
The nursing home has refused to turn over surveillance footage of the assault, it said.
RELATED: These Colorado nursing homes were poorly rated and eligible for federal oversight. Until this week, nobody knew.
Attempts to reach the director of Renew and the facility’s owners were unsuccessful.
The lawsuit also accuses former nursing director, Britny Otto, of violating state law when she denied that Anne B. had assaulted a staff member during testimony about the first lawsuit.
“Despite actual knowledge that it was understaffed, Otto and Peregrine aggressively marketed Peregrine as having higher staffing than its competitors, as well as a better activities program than its competitors,” the lawsuit said. Otto had failed to report Anne B.’s assault on a staff member to police or the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment as required by Colorado law, the lawsuit said.
Renew Saddle Rock’s website said the memory care facility offers “all of the services and amenities that provide residents and families complete peace of mind, while transcending the status quo with experiential innovations like custom jewelry design and woodworking with local artists or private concerts with wine and cheese pairings.”
Peregrine actually staffed the nursing home with only one worker for up to 28 dementia patients during night shifts and on weekends, the lawsuit said.
Dryva would not have admitted her mother to the nursing home if she had been told about the first assault and the fact that Anne B. was still living in the home, the lawsuit said.
Anne B. has also been accused of assaulting a third Renew resident, who was identified as “Josephine,” and a worker who quit because of the attack, the lawsuit said. The nursing home did not report the assaults to law enforcement or licensing authorities, the lawsuit said.
To continue reading click here.
FIGHTING BACK! VictimS of Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect, Make it Public and File Suit Against Owners [video]
Making the Case | The rights of nursing home residents and families
Unfortunately, nursing home abuse is all too common, and many cases go unreported.
However, there are standards of care that nursing homes must meet. If they fail to meet these standards, victims and their families can sue in civil court.
Nursing home abuse can involve intentional physical violence, sexual assault, psychological abuse, financial exploitation, and neglect. While some forms of abuse are obvious, others are harder to detect.
Signs of nursing home abuse or neglect may include:
Broken bones, bruising or cuts
Frequent infections
Dehydration
Mood swings and emotional outbursts
Refusal to eat or take medications Or
Unexplained weight loss
If you believe your loved one has been abused or neglected by a nursing home or assisted living facility, visit munley.com
The US Nursing Home Travesty of Justice, Financial Fraud, Patient Abuse, Government Neglect and Liability and the Profiteers who Profit From it all
The Rosewood Care Center in Inverness, Ill., was backed by a program run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development that insures loans to more than 2,300 nursing homes across the country. CreditCreditDanielle Scruggs for The New York Times
$146 Million Default by Nursing Home Chain Leaves U.S. on the Hook
The cracks in the foundation of a Chicago nursing-home business began to appear almost immediately.
The owners stopped making mortgage payments on their crown jewel, the Rosewood Care Centers, barely a year after buying it in 2013. Paperwork about the chain’s finances was never filed with the government. Some money meant for the 13 nursing homes and assisted-living facilities went to prop up another investment.
In the end, the business defaulted last year on $146 million in government-backed mortgages — the biggest collapse in the history of a little-known loan-guarantee program run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The Rosewood debacle demonstrates the problems plaguing the HUD program, which helps nursing homes obtain affordable loans and has become a linchpin of the American elder-care system.
By the government’s own admission, the federal agency’s stewardship of the program has been haphazard. Its oversight of nursing homes has been weak. When HUD officials have spotted problems, they often have been slow to respond. Sometimes it has taken years to intervene, allowing the finances at certain facilities to unravel to such an extent that the quality of care was undermined.
HUD officials described Rosewood as an outlier, saying that only 1 percent of the guaranteed loans end up defaulting. “Mortgage defaults in this program are exceedingly rare, yet reaching an acceptable resolution requires an owner’s willingness and ability to work on behalf of their residents,” the department said in a statement.
But the program — run by a department better known for fostering affordable housing — is a vulnerability for the federal agency. The nursing home industry is increasingly being run by for-profit operators facing dwindling margins. Some homes — especially those in rural areas — are struggling to stay open, with operators blaming low occupancy and insufficient payments from Medicaid and Medicare.
LOSTMESSIAH 