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
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
Jun 29, 2020
Nursing homes operated by for-profit companies are dumping their residents in order to replace them with more patients with COVID-19, since they can bring in at least $600 more a day to the nursing homes than other patients.
The patients they are dumping are among the most susceptible to the coronavirus. They are old, disabled, suffering from dementia, or recovering from serious illness or injury. And they are being dumped into homeless shelters, rundown motels and other unsafe facilities. In some cases, they are being left to fend for themselves on the streets. And very often, the nursing homes are doing this without notifying the residents’ families or any state officials supposedly responsible for regulating them.
Often, this dumping practice is practically a death sentence.
Rockport Health Care Services is an example of a nursing home business that practices such patient dumping. Rockport manages more than 70 nursing homes in California. On March 31, while the COVID-19 cases were skyrocketing, a Rockport executive wrote in an email that they should begin “discharge planning immediately.” This was code for kicking out the least-lucrative residents in order to start receiving more profitable COVID-19 patients. “You are looking to replace the poorest, least profitable patients with the highest paying ones,” explained a previous chief executive of Rockport in 2018.
In capitalism, for the rich owners, the nursing homes are like any other type of business. They go after more profits without pity and impunity. And as in the case of nursing homes, dumping residents like trash shows we pay for their profit with our flesh and blood.