Even if it loses money, many reasons to keep The Villages

Posted 12 September 2013 at 12:00 am

Editor:

There have been a lot of writings on the pros and cons about The Villages of Orleans (nursing home) in Albion. The latest statistic shows that 92 percent of county-owned nursing homes outside of New York City are losing money.

Despite this fact I believe we should keep our nursing home in the hands of our county.

I also believe we have a moral obligation to take care of our elderly and infirm for all they have done for us even if it means making financial sacrifices, rather than selling them down the road to the highest bidder.

I personally come to the nursing home about twice a week and happen to know many residents there. Among them are many well-known people who once held positions such as mayor, chief of police, etc. I don’t want this to happen to them.

Many people say there will be no change in service going from public to profit. Not immediately, but very soon you will see the quality of care drop by cutting the staff, adding inexperienced help and cutting costs in other ways. You will see fewer hard-to-place people being accepted.You will see the Four-Star rating of The Villages being history.

There is also another observation. Society doesn’t like locally owned nursing homes and hospitals. It favors corporation-owned, state and federal owned facilities for the simple reason it can be easier to control or manipulate them.This is especially important as legalization of euthanasia is being considered.With the slogan, “the right to die” which may very soon lead to “the duty to die,” especially when there is not enough money to keep the homes or hospitals going. (Remember World War II Germany.)

It may start very innocently like in the early ’70s making abortion legal. Now we have about 50 million Americans dead and an aging population as a result. We try to replace them with foreign workers or undocumented immigrants to do most of our manual work.

All in all we should keep our nursing home in the hands of the county for the above reasons.

Concerned Citizen,

Adolf Genter
Albion