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Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs

theguardian.com

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Re: Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs

#81

Post by causal »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #76
PearlRiver wrote: post #55

People who think the government is bad have never met a corporation.

People who think the government is bad generally point out that there's only one government, but typically multiple corporations. I am not one of those people, but their point does need to be fully addressed.

There are numerous governments in any given country, if you consider the various overlapping jurisdictions.

Taleb sees business and government as equally incompetent, but businesses are supposed to die and so make room for better ideas to thrive.

Unless, of course, you bail them out of their mistakes.

Re: Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs

#82

Post by FuckButtons »

jancsika wrote: post #69

Someone needs to create a kind of JSON for care homes, if you will. Something like a super simple spec of what a goddamned care home object is for, and the minimum number of actually fairly-paid full-time staff one needs to achieve that in practice. Then it doesn't matter how many baroque shell companies it takes represent the thing internally. Either the thing can output a response in Care Home Object Notation, or i…

Once upon a time, I heard someone tell me a fairytale about this thing called a ‘law' and they said that laws could be used to enforce compliance with standards across an entire country. Pure fantasy I know, but a man can dream.

Re: Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs

#83

Post by cloudbonsai »

elephanlemon wrote: post #30

Could someone (please not an LLM) attempt to steel man the following position for me: Private equity is overall good for society

PE is a very broad practice. It's kinda hard to make a single-blanket argument for it (it's like asking "Is Software good for society?" Yes, maybe?).

So here are some positive things that I think PE funds can contribute:

1) Private equity serves as an exit path for small business builders. Suppose that you have built a small, profitable trucking company. Now you are old and want to retire. You kids have no interest in the business, and have already built different careers elsewhere than managing a fleet of Super Greats. Oftentimes, PE funds are only realistic buyers of your business.

2) At a more subtle level, PE can supply better management. For example, a supermarket owner I know accepted capital from a PE fund specifically to acquire better talent (his remark: "very talented people are rarely excited to operate a rural food & beverage shop").

3) PE-backed companies are, arguably, structurally better than the public counterparts. The cliche is that many public firms are run like third-world fiefdoms (the board are focused on empire building; the executives are spending money lavishly on perks). Most of these concerns vanish once each director are given a shared, transparent objective set by the deal structure. (As Henry Kravis often remarks, PE is mostly about alignment of the interests)

Re: Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs

#84

Post by randycupertino »

FireBeyond wrote: post #26
lisper wrote: post #17

My parents ended up being forced by circumstances to move into a retirement home about five years ago. Fortunately, the place turned out to be run by people who mostly cared about their clients and so my parents' lives were basically OK, except that the food sucked (which AFAICT is par for the course at retirement homes). But a few months ago the place was acquired by a different company, which is trying to squeeze o…

As a (former) paramedic, PE-run SNFs (skilled nursing facilities) are an absolute evil that absolutely kills people. I do want to be clear before any of the following that while there is a truth that many of the nursing staff at these facilities are often the lower quality tier of nursing care, they often care greatly for their patients/residents. Staffing/flooring ratios? Laughable correlation to reality. Many a tim…

Also a former medic, the best care homes I ever went to were the Jewish Home for the Aged. They were so much nicer and the patients there never had decubitus ulcers or staph infection in skin folds from not being cleaned.

The worst place I ever saw was Atherton Long Care which supposedly is fancy and expensive but they had neglected an old lady so poorly I actually reported them to CDPH and the ombudsman. She had full on necrotized tissue under both her breasts and a rotted unchanged g-tube that you could smell all the way down the hallway to the nursing station it was so sad. John George Psych hospital and Cordilleras MHRC are both also very sad hellholes. Patients sleeping laying on the floor in the hallways with a blanket because the rooms are full etc. We had a lady who purposely stabbed herself in the eye so she could go to the ER to get out of Cordilleras because it was so awful.

What I found if you ever need to place your loved on in a care home is the sniff test is the best assessment of how well it's run and if the patients are cared for. If patients are cleaned regularly and not left to sit in their own diapers it really shows there is enough staff ratio and attention given to the patients. Go on a random evening or day and at different times. Food quality is also a good indicator - eat lunch with your parents there. Would you eat this yourself voluntarily? If yes, it's probably a good place not run on a shoestring budget.

Also - hn readers - if your mom is in a care home please always check under her breasts to ensure she is clean and dry there every time you visit. Far far too many old ladies get candida and bacterial infections under their breasts that are never cleaned or taken care of because it's embarrassing to check or clean and dry so then it just gets wet and rots and is painful, sad and gross and can lead to even worse things like cellulitis or an abscess.

Re: Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs

#85

Post by randycupertino »

vonnik wrote: post #32

I worked for a while selling fractional nurses into for-profit nursing/retirement homes at the end of Covid, got to interview some industry experts, who told me that these for-profit homes are the 21st century equivalent of 19th century insane asylums. If you or your loved ones have to enter one, seek at all costs a home that is not for profit (Catholic orders run some, Jewish organizations others, the VA also offers…

100% agree- the Jewish home for the aged is the nicest facility I ever saw in my career as a medic. I asked some of the nurses I worked with about why they were on such a different level - better than even the fanciest most expensive $30k a month places in Portola Valley or Palo Alto - and was told it's because taking care of the elderly is a fundamental tenet of Judaism.

Re: Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs

#86

Post by frameworkeGPU »

jancsika wrote: post #69

Someone needs to create a kind of JSON for care homes, if you will. Something like a super simple spec of what a goddamned care home object is for, and the minimum number of actually fairly-paid full-time staff one needs to achieve that in practice. Then it doesn't matter how many baroque shell companies it takes represent the thing internally. Either the thing can output a response in Care Home Object Notation, or i…

in the US a sickening % of marketing for SNFs is actually describing state-mandated requirements. "...and we even have a community led residents' association!"

depends on your state ofc. none of them are a single page tmk. this makes sense, regulations are famously written in blood. don't do this if you're unprepared to be in a terrible mood, ofc.

Re: Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs

#87

Post by mmooss »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #57
mmooss wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could happen this year; legislatures just need to pass laws. The hardest part is people posting comments like yours as a diversion from doing real work (though there are other hard parts too).

that's right! if only I wasnt posting snarky crap on HN we'd have a Utopia. Paging Upton Sinclair!

We each have power, influence, and responsibility. You're spending yours on cleverness, and wasting others by shifting the focus and undermining their efforts. Cleverness, in the end, doesn't matter.

> Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair didn't waste it.

Re: Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs

#88

Post by danny_codes »

e-dant wrote: post #15

The market is perfectly efficient, value is well attributed, lobbying is a social good, being rich means you’re smart and should have special privileges, optimizing for returns on investment is equivalent to optimizing for a better society Obviously I’m kidding, and something is rotten

We let capitalism run too far. Need to swing hard towards socialism or the whole thing will collapse

Re: Private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs

#89

Post by rayiner »

nradov wrote: post #47
bradleyjg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure the new owners are scummy, but the fundamental problem isn’t scummy people. There’s lots of markets that are okay-ish notwithstanding scummy people. Even those with natural lock in effects. The fundamental problem is it is at the intersection of two out of the three areas of the economy that have had insane cost growth over the last 30 years—-housing and healthcare (the third is education.) For the first one…

The other fundamental problem is the demographic profile in most developed countries. We have aging populations, and proportionally fewer young people to care for them. I'll bet most HN users wouldn't want to work at a retirement home or assisted living facility even if it paid well. My father spent his final years in such a facility and dealing with him was quite difficult for the staff there. This will inevitably c…

The other other fundamental problem is that dealing with elderly people often is difficult and unpleasant and what can you really expect from people who aren't related to them? Daycares and preschools are often very loving places because babies are cute and trigger people's nurturing instincts but that's not true of the elderly.
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