Cory touches on one side of the story;
Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that South Dakota is violating Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act by forcing thousands of South Dakotans into nursing homes instead of providing home-based and community-based care options.
According to the DOJ Civil Rights Division’s letter and findings released yesterday, the department notified the state of this investigation on August 11, 2014. DOJ says South Dakota has spent an inordinate amount of its Medicaid dollars on nursing home care that unnecessarily deny individuals with disabilities the “supports and services in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs†that the ADA, as interpreted in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1999 Olmstead decision, requires.
Oh, But Denny has an excuse;
Dennis Daugaard, South Dakota’s governor, said that his state had made progress but that, with such a sparse population, it faced problems not shared by more urban areas.
“Ideally, we want elderly residents and people with disabilities to be able to stay in their communities and receive the services they need without going to a nursing home,†Mr. Daugaard said in a statement. “That can be a challenge for a state like ours, which is made up of rural communities.â€
The Justice Department, however, said South Dakota was not trying hard enough to address a problem it has known about for years. In 2013, it spent $133 million in Medicaid money on nursing homes and $27 million on in-home care, the department said.
Oh, baloney. Most of these people are forced into these nursing homes to suck what little estate they have left. They can live on their own with assistance. My 93 year old grandfather lives in un-assisted living apartment by himself. While he has the luxury of many different family members checking on him, he also has a traveling VA nurse that stops by (bi-monthly?) to make sure he has his meds in order and other OTC items. She told him he is her oldest veteran she sees. My grandfather has NO INTEREST in living in a nursing home, and really he is much happier (and healthier) because he is not.
I think the state needs to work with these people more to keep them in their homes.
Another way to keep the elderly out of the voting booth and keep the Republican machine oiled while they strip away Social Security and other interests that the wisdom our Senior Citizen’s have that could turn the tide. It seems Dookey Guard has a geriatric prison system going on and seems to make the elderly feel like an inconvenience to the Nursing Homes (Yes, that’s what they are). Yep, make them feel like a burden for asking for a ride to the booth, give them meds so they do the Thorazine shuffle instead and stool softners so they can shit themselves and appear incompetent and incontinent. Someday, the elderly and minorities will get a fair shake and be treated like human beings (Yes, they are human beings) and a more Democratic process will take place and we can have equality. Jeesh, Republican’s, I tell ya…
I gathered from the article that it is more about disabled persons who are not elderly, but are adults. There are few options for folks in the 40-60 range that need services. They wind up in a nursing home with the old folks and receive physical care, but the environment is not encouraging or comforting, not even social.