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New Rule Enacted by Bush Administration Impedes Cases Against Nursing Homes
The Bush administration shut off a source of information last fall about abuse and neglect in long-term care facilities that people suing nursing homes consider crucial to their cases.
Jean Hanson talks about her parents who were allegedly abused in a nursing home in Minnesota. A new rule enacted by the Bush administration has made it harder to get information for such cases. (Photo Credit: By Brie Cohen -- Albert Lea (Minn.) Tribune Via Associated Press Photo) The change, which affects the $144 billion nursing-home industry, was enacted with no public notice or attention.
"This is pretty stunning," said Mark Kosieradzki, a plaintiff attorney in Plymouth, Minn. "Nobody was told. It was just done."
The rule designates state inspectors and Medicare and Medicaid contractors as federal employees, a group usually shielded from providing evidence for either side in private litigation.
The restrictions affect about 16,000 nursing facilities and 3 million residents in the United States. The practical effect is to force litigants to go to greater lengths, including seeking court orders, to get inspection reports or depositions for cases they are pursuing or defending.
"This change hurts nursing-home residents and their families by allowing bad practices to be kept in secret by nursing homes and inspectors," said Eric M. Carlson, an attorney with the National Senior Citizens Law Center in Los Angeles. "Government inspectors have the right to go into nursing homes and investigate, and they learn things that residents and families otherwise could never find out."
The new rule, which was issued in September, generally prohibits state health departments and contractors from participating in private lawsuits involving facilities that are in the federal assistance program without approval by the head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The rule was justified as being necessary to accommodate the hiring of new contractors to make Medicare payments to providers, perform audit and fraud reviews, and do survey, certification and enforcement work for the program.
Requests for these employees to participate in private cases "divert employees from their federal survey, certification and enforcement responsibilities," the Bush administration said in a supporting document. "The cumulative effect of these requests can impede these activities."
The effect of the directives has started to play out in the nation's courtrooms. Requests for information, once fairly routine, now are stalled between state and federal officials.
Anne Marie Regan, an attorney with the Kentucky Equal Justice Center, a nonprofit poverty legal advocacy and research center, said the change has slowed a case she is pursuing on behalf of an 85-year-old man who was evicted from a nursing home in 2007.
Priscilla Shoemaker, legal counsel for the American Health Care Association in Washington, said nursing homes "are in the same boat" because they also have difficulty getting information on how state inspectors determine penalties, citations and orders to shut down homes.
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13 Comments so far
Show AllI guess more of Bush's reign of terror!
Maybe bush wants to stick his own parents in one of these homes...
A co-worker & I were discussing George W. I said, "George really slunk out of Washington without a word and disappeared. No one even talks about him."
My co-worker replied, "George Bush is one guy you NEVER want to hear from."
Truer words were never spoken. Unfortunately, through the enactment of 11th-hour dirty tricks like this one, we DID hear from George Bush again. There was a delayed reaction, kind of like food poisoning.
Yet another illustration of the federal government's failure as an institution because of too much executive power. The only way to stop these types of executive orders is to enact a new constitution that explicitly takes this power away.
How many more lie in the wings?
Suing the health care system is a joke... See what is on record as "THE ACCEPTABLE STANDARDS OF HEALTH CARE" in East Tennessee. Nothing at all in comparison to the misleading health care ads we see on television, billboards, newspapers etc. http://www.wisecountyissues.com Profit care is all that matters in health care thanks to Bush and his GREEDY counterparts.
A whole new army of government employees with all the entitlements implied. An expansion of government powers beyond reason. The blow back will be severe.
Tip of the ice burg folks. King George and his right wing buddies, including the major Media corporations, have been brain washing America for the last 30 years.
While we have been lulled into a mild sleep, the republican right has found the way to pass laws in the middle of the night that has weakened are ability's to seek justice and compensation in a court of law.
Hey , lunatic right and wacko left , all of our civil rights are being attacked.
Once again, I wonder where the American lawyers stand on this issue.
Our elected officials in Washington have always been greedy opportunists, but over the last 8 years they have become Constitutional law obstructionists.
With all the warrant less spys popping up all over the country , in every home and business, nursing homes that abuse patients would be an easy target for law suits.
It does not surprise me the Bush found a way to make law suits against these organizations more difficult.
Warrant less surveillance is a cancer that will force major changes in our laws to protect the wealthy corporations that commit crimes against Americans , while protecting the nation wide spy network.
National security is at risk because of the warrant less surveillance programs,
the Fox is in the hen house.
There are no checks and balances to make sure that the DHS is not orchestrating a government take over, NSA forbids any questions asked about programs and classified information Nancy Pelosi explained in an interview with Rachel Madow last night.
One of my favorite commercials is from Sprint Nextel. Every adult in the commercial is wearing a GTF express logo on there shirts, A teacher in a classroom wearing a GTF express shirt is looking for a student that did not show up for detention. With in seconds, this detention supervisor is calling other GTF Express stazi police who report back with the two way nextel phones where the student is not. Then , a GTF Express truck and driver patrolling the neighborhood spot the student and report back. The detention teacher orders the redirection of the student back to detention to the truck driver.
What the hell is this advertisement saying, and who the hell is it directed to in the consumer market.
Welcome stazi police, they are no gearing advertisements to you and your unpatriotic , anti-constitutional, un American agency's.
Got to hell, you spy freaks.
BornFreeMen
You do know that the Carlyle Group owns Manor Care nursing homes?
Bush/Cheney's plan, and it's working, was to expand the federal government into every segment of our society, and he found the perfect vehicle to do that in the department of homeland security. If there's an area where "we the people" still had a voice, put it under DHS. What's left that isn't there?
And he made certain the supreme court was filled with a majority of catholics - who won't go against the pope when it comes to anything pro choice, gay, or other pope mandate.
Do you feel screwed yet?
Ray Berthiaume
Wilmoor, give us a break! The pope is also against birth control. What effect do you think that has on Catholic legislators? Billy Graham has more influence on the American public than the pope.
Ray Berthiaume - My comment about the pope was in regard to the church groups doing with pro-choice and birth control as they did with Prop 8 in CA, and it ends up in the Supreme Court. I'm sure there isn't anything in the Constitution on those two issues since they didn't have these issues at the time it was written, so the decision will be left up to each judge's personal beliefs or feelings on the subject.
And these church groups have already decided when life begins, and are working to get State Constitutional amendments passed based on that unproven assumption, so you can bet it's something that will end up in the Supreme Court.
Under every Bush there is always dirt. The Man has a reverse Midas touch; everything he touches goes from gold to #!&*!