By Javier Robles
The Nursing Home, Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation Center II in Andover, N.J., is a testament to a sinister operation devoid of feeling for its residents or staff. It is also, a perfect example of the value that we have come to place on the elderly and people with disabilities in this country. According, to the New York Times there have been serious problems at this nursing home for years. These problems have not been corrected within that time and the victims who died were the most vulnerable. Reports about this nursing home appear to say, that when you cannot find a bed anywhere else in New Jersey, you send your poor and destitute here. You send individuals with mental health disorders, and other disabilities as well as the elderly. You stack them four to a room with a cloth curtain in between each bed and you close the door. This is tragic!
Where is the money that is being paid by Medicaid and Medicare going? 43 million a
It is not going towards buying equipment for staff or patients, and it is definitely not going towards providing the required amount of staff per patient as per the law. But, it is not surprising that we find ourselves in a situation where nursing homes across the country are disproportionately affected by Covid-19 otherwise known as the coronavirus. These so-called nursing homes are nothing more than corporate moneymaking machines. If you are a machine and your job is to make money and profits then you do everything in your power to cut costs at the expense of people. The coronavirus might be the ultimate cause of death for the 70 people who died in this nursing home, but it is not what killed them. What killed the staff and residents of the Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation Center was us. Every single individual must take responsibility for what had happened across the country and developmental centers, group homes, nursing homes and so much more.
The situation we currently find ourselves in as it relates to those most at society’s margins such as the elderly and disabled is not new. Since the passage of eugenics laws in the United States and the affirmation of such laws by the Supreme Court people with disabilities, people of color, and those who were seen as not contributing were expendable. Thousands of individuals considered feebleminded, epileptic or a drain on society such as poor whites or poor blacks were sterilized against their will. This historical truth is with us today. Even after, the passing of such laws aimed at protecting individuals with disabilities like The 1973 Rehabilitation Act, The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act And the Americans With Disabilities Act. Laws cannot protect people who are marginalized and invisible to society. Laws cannot pull them from these places where we put them so we could forget. We as a society pass the baton of responsibility to the corporations whose sole purpose was to make money. This may not be every corporation but in the case of this nursing home and possibly others that they may operate in the country it is so.
The state and federal government are also responsible and must act to ensure that no other individual that is elderly, disabled or poor suffers the indignity of death which has befallen the residents here. We should not wait until we are in a better place to investigate and prosecute the individuals responsible for the deaths in this place. It is our responsibility to care for one another as citizens. We have not cared. Moreover, we have turned a blind eye to that which is evident before us. Evident before we ever heard the word coronavirus. I fear this is only the tip of the iceberg. But one thing is certain something needs to change. It needs to change now!
We cannot become complacent when those that we entrusted to nursing homes, group homes, or developmental centers come back home in body bags. That is not America. We cannot go back to the age of eugenics when people like myself and those I love were disposable. The government is supposed to protect the people, and we are the people, black, brown, disabled, elderly, poor and rich. I call on our government in New Jersey and the federal government to swiftly prosecute the management and ownership of this particular nursing home. And to begin investigating other nursing homes in our state and elsewhere where people have died needlessly.
