Is St. Rita’s Subject to the Rules of the Free Market?

In the midst of the rising numbers of tragedies in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there is likely to be none more gruesome than the drowning of 34 patients at St. Rita’s Nursing Home.

St. Rita’s was run by Salvador and Mable Mangano. A quick check of the Medicare “Nursing Home Compare” web site indicates that the Mangano’s ran a home with mixed reviews, a higher than average rate of restraining patients, for example, but a lower than average rate of depressed patients. The 2004 inspection lists 6 health deficiencies, all corrected, consisted of mostly procedural deficiencies such as the lack of required care plans and programs. Time will tell if this was an ominous foreboding of the tragedy to come.

Time will also tell whether Medicare, Medicaid, and other State and Local agencies end up being blamed for the failures of this nursing home. Make no mistake, the Mangano’s made a tragic decision when they rejected the urgings of Bryan Bertucci, St. Bernard coroner, “who said he called nursing home owner Mable Mangano during a Parish Council meeting at 2 p.m. on Aug. 28, a day before the storm.“ The Magnano’s had an evacuation plan, but chose not to enact it, claiming they did not receive a mandatory evacuation notice. Bertucci says, in his call, that he “asked her why she hadn’t followed the evacuation plan she filed with the parish and removed her patients to Baton Rouge and Lafayette on the two buses set aside for them.”

And yet, in the face of this blatant failure by a private enterprise, Joe Scarborough bears down on the local government and repeats the lies of the lack of buses and evacuation plans that in no way affected this facility in any event. Suddenly, the invisible hand of the free market that will hold private business accountable is not just invisible, but completely absent. While we have had nothing but blame the victim squawking directed at the poorest of those in New Orleans, when a private business earning money to protect the most vulnerable of our citizens chooses to ignore evacuation warnings, the right points the finger at government.

Thank goodness for Charles Foti, the Democratic AG, who knows that there is no higher responsibility than the responsibility to our frail elders. Pointedly, when private enterprise chooses to benefit financially from the care of our elders, it also must accept the responsibility for its failures. I refuse to accept this notion that we blame the government when private enterprise fails to deliver the public services it commits to, and let them walk away with all the profits (and tax cuts) otherwise.

– http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/b...