the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Nov 14, 2016
Washington, D.C. will lose 10 percent of its long-term-care beds and one of its last remaining hospice centers in December. That is when Washington Home and Hospice has contracted to sell its rehabilitation center to Sidwell Friends, the very expensive private school. This facility recently housed 200 aging and disabled patients who were almost all on Medicaid.
Washington Home was paid $110,000 per patient per year by Medicaid but argues that wasn’t enough money to keep the nursing home open. The residents, including retired nannies and federal workers, will have to find new places to stay. Some are wheelchair bound or have other difficulties in seeing, speaking, eating, and so on. Their families will have to scramble to place them miles away. No new nursing home has opened in Washington for six and a half years, and already more than 400 elderly and disabled former D.C. residents are forced to stay in Maryland and Virginia facilities paid with city Medicaid dollars.
Caring for old and sick people obviously has no place in the world capital of capitalism.