I just spent the day moving my wife’s grandmother into a retirement home – the one I work at. For the first time, I have seen how much work it is to get someone placed in the system.
The system is badly in need of revision. It is understaffed, over-bureaucratted, and way too interested in money. I understand earning a profit, and I am all in favor of doing so, but this system is straight out of the Ebenezar Scrooge Wring Each Dollar Out Of The Sucker school of economics. This is a system where management doesn’t smile because there’s no way to charge people for receiving them.
My wife’s grandmother was a part of the generation that made this nation great. She is part of the generation that beat Hitler, rebuilt the economy after the Depression, and created the lap of luxury that the Boomers are currently sitting in.
We owe them better than this. Charging them 3 star hotel prices for a single room and meals is too much.
This is why I don’t trust corporations. They aren’t interested in real people.
This is why we need Governments - to regulate, and to enforce regulations.
Sure, we can leave the markets to sort themselves out. It worked great in Tombstone, Arizona, back before the Earps.
Is that the kind of America people want? No rules, the strong eat the weak? There are countries like that, you know. They have armed rebellions every few months because without enforced laws, there is only one way for the common people to deal with the grifters and the misers.
I for one do not want our system to degenerate into a Darwinian hell where people steal the medications they need, and nursing homes become deadbeat hotels where the elderly are deprived because their next of kin stiffed the management and fled.
We owe our grandparents a better world than that.