Kill Old People Cheap Act
The Kill Old People Cheap Act of 2009
The nursing home industry is back at the legislature this session demanding a law to cap its liability for neglecting and abusing residents. If last year's version of the bill was dubbed the "Kill Old People Cheap Act," this year's is even more audacious.
Residents and their families could win no more than $300,000 for non-economic damages—intangible harm such as pain, emotional distress, disfigurement or loss of a loved one. The bill would place health services provided by nursing homes under the same rules as medical malpractice cases, making it harder and costlier for residents to prove negligence.
What's new is this devious provision: Should a jury actually award punitive damages against one of our state's wretched nursing homes, half the cash would be snatched out of the patient's hands and placed into a state fund. Where would that money go? Back to the nursing home industry, of course.
The prime force behind the legislation is National Healthcare Corp., which owned the Nashville home where 16 residents died in a fire five years ago. Fighting the bill is Tennessee Citizen Action—a coalition of trial lawyers, advocates for the disabled and labor unions. They say the bill shields homes from responsibility for bad care.
"This bill is one of the most outrageous and extreme examples of corporate greed and political over-reaching that we have ever seen," says executive director Tom Peters. "It provides near-complete immunity when homes abuse or neglect residents and does nothing to improve care." —Jeff Woods
Manly, but unhappy
Last week, the makers of Combos—the delicious fake-cheese snack product—named Nashville America's manliest city. Its way scientific report gave us props for our devotion to hunting, fishing, barbeque joints and NASCAR, while noting our relative absence of "emasculating" features like minivans.
The city rejoiced by drinking too much, shooting small arms fire into the air, then crashing our F-150s into the ditch. Fortunately, everyone was equipped with towing chains, which you won't find in the country's least manly city, New York.
Alas, the celebration dimmed only days later when BusinessWeek, known for a lesser brand of science, declared Nashville the eighth-unhappiest city in America. Instead of using worthwhile measurements like deer hunting and ribs, the magazine reached its conclusion by accounting for such things as suicide, divorce, crime and cloudy days. Boring.
That put us in the company of the great homes to natural disaster (New Orleans), severe gambling debts (Las Vegas), the requisite list of Midwestern dumps (Detroit, Cleveland and St. Louis), and Jacksonville. The most depressed city was Portland, where the entire population consists of white guys with dreads who beg for money on the sidewalk accompanied by their trophy dogs, which look like really friendly versions of wolves. How, you ask, can mooching for change with bad hair and a friendly dog make you unhappy? The Scene's Portland correspondent weighs in:"Those rasta-bums will only accept organic food. Wish I was kidding. I tried to give one a 6-inch Subway and the dude told me, 'Naw, I can't accept a product of the corporate machine.' Sucks for him. It had extra cheese." —Pete Kotz
Lost planet Kelsey
Rep. Brian Kelsey has denounced Gov. Phil Bredesen for accepting $140 million in federal stimulus money to expand benefits for laid-off workers. According to Kelsey, whose understanding of the situation is a little shaky, "This decision will surely lead to a tax increase in Tennessee. This money comes with strings attached that will bankrupt our unemployment insurance fund."
Kelsey notes that Tennessee will grant unemployment benefits to part-time employees for the first time in state history. Kelsey further notes that the funds will require an increase in payments to full-time employees.
While most would consider this a good thing, in Kelsey's World it's downright sacrilege: "Our state will blow through the $141 million from the federal government in one month, and Tennesseans will be stuck paying for increased benefits for years," he says. "It is fiscally irresponsible to tax Tennessee workers in the middle of a recession to pay for an expansion in government benefits."
He might have been right—if he wasn't just making all that up. But on the morning Kelsey issued his press release, Bredesen had already discovered that, because Tennessee's unemployment benefits are so pathetically low, the federal money could last an entire decade.
Kelsey, however, is not a man often trifled by truth. He's been urging Bredesen to reject all stimulus money as a matter of principle—a principle that says if Brian Kelsey doesn't need it, why should anyone else? —Jeff Woods
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