From the Inbox

CM Harrison

Bordeaux property owner Mike Peden has noticed the attention the area is getting with Mayor Karl Dean's plan to sell off the nursing home and he calls my attention to the neglect he feels public safety in Bordeaux is getting from Council Member Frank Harrison (who to my knowledge has not spoken publicly on the plan to privatize the Bordeaux long-term care facility).

Mike owns three properties across the street from Cumberland Pointe Apartments, which are owned by Lawlerwood Housing LLC. He says that company purchased the complex last December, "utilizing the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program as a source of investment capital." According to Mike, crime is a real problem at Cumberland Pointe: there were 995 "calls for service" to police last year. He emailed an attachment that list calls including reports of "person with weapon," "domestic disturbance," "911 hang-up," "disorderly person," "suspicious person," "criminal vice activity," "shots fired," "shooting," "theft," "burglary," "fight/assault." Each of these were listed multiple times throughout the part of the list I read. I stopped reading the long list when I got to the June entries. 20 residents were evicted from Cumberland Pointe for "criminal activity".

Mike said that CM Harrison seemed "unfriendly" toward him and told him he should contact Rep. Jim Cooper since all of the rents at the complex are subsidized by HUD. He declined Mike's request to hold a meeting with Lawlerwood to problem-solve. When Mike got in touch with the owners himself, they told him (in Mike's words) that these calls for service are not good indicators of criminal activity.

Metro council member advocates selling off public healthcare for the elderly 120 years after Metro started it

Save the strong, lose the weak.
Never turning the other cheek.
Trust nobody, don't be no fool.
Whatever happened to that Golden Rule?

-- Stevie Ray Vaughan, Crossfire 

Despite my chagrin that we have a Mayor who would turn Nashville's elderly patients over to the foibles of private healthcare providers, I was struck that one council member defended the Mayor with his own peculiar brand of social Darwinism:

Councilman Jerry Maynard, who chairs the council’s Health, Hospital and Social Services Committee, said privatizing the centers would allow Metro to strengthen Nashville General by putting the city’s entire health care subsidy behind the hospital. “I believe that’s our moral, legal and ethical obligation — to provide a public, safety-net hospital,” he said.

Got that? If Karl Dean and Jerry Maynard have their way, we are going to cut off our elderly from subsidized long-term care and accountable Metro oversight in order to flip the funds to general healthcare for those in the population who do not need long-term care. Reverend Maynard's ethics are utilitarian (funding as much good as the Mayor's Office will allow for a larger number of short-term patients, or as Karl Dean calls them, "customers"). But the Reverend's defense is also brute social Darwinism: the younger, biologically superior population deserves the best chances to survive and the access to government subsidies in order to do so.

Just like that, after 120 years of the county looking after long-term needs elderly patients, Reverend Jerry Maynard is prepared to sell out nursing home residents' interests to the indifferent marketplace. He is willing to hock instead of promote their welfare. He is intent on casting them out into the world of medical commerce, where are as likely to be picked out of the herd by industry hyenas as they are to get accountable medical treatment.

The trade-off: he saves his own pet projects. Word is he is planning to run for Mayor, so I assume "saving" Metro General while letting the elderly go has value as future campaign fodder.

This is a brave new world. Government leaders who call themselves "Democrats" no longer even bother to lift a finger to advocate for those who cannot any more. To them this is just one more privatization deal to grease the skids of the special interests.

Jerry Maynard's resume includes pastoring a church. I assume that means that he sees himself as an authentic Christian minister. I wonder how he reconciles these ethical compromises with power and money to the teachings that his faith tradition considers as definitive for character. When I survey Christian scriptures to find justifications for subjecting weaker people to brutal societal forces I instead read these:

• For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited me in .... whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.
• Blessed be you poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you that hunger now: for you shall be filled. Blessed are you that weep now: for you shall laugh .... But woe unto you that are rich! for you have received your consolation .... Woe unto you that are full! for you shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for you shall mourn and weep.
• How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

I don't see how a Christian minister can adhere to these tenets but exercise a lifeboat ethics, cutting loose those assumed to be less worthy of the guarantee of a public safety net. If anything, Reverend Maynard should be advocating for the elderly at Bordeaux precisely because his Christianity will not allow his politics to turn away conveniently from the most vulnerable like the priest and the Levite on the Jericho road.

If he has heard the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the past, perhaps Reverend Maynard needs to hear them again with fresh ears:

the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is...1,200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about 2,200 feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the "Bloody Pass." And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked -- the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"

It is hard to reconcile MLK's view with a social Darwinist or utilitarian politics that argues that good government should not be "in the business" of securing the common good. Securing the common good means spending more and risking more for those most spent and at most risk in our society. It means stopping to help those who need our help even when rational calculations tell us that it could cost us.

In all of his words defending Mayor Dean on privatizing healthcare, Reverend Maynard does not bother to stop and ask what might happen to the elderly Bordeaux residents once their facilities are privatized. His faith is built on nothing less than the marketplace and Dean's noblesse.

But Reverend Maynard's problem is that he frames the question completely at odds with the common good. We are not simply in the nursing home business by providing long-term care for the elderly. We are not simply competitors with private industry. Publicly-subsidized healthcare, which Reverend seems to advocate when it comes to Metro General Hospital or Obamacare, is a safety net for those who might not benefit from privately-run care. Any one of us deserves refuge at our lowest moments, and those of us who are at most risk, especially so.

Publicly-managed long-term care should be sanctuary from the predatory inclinations of the private enterprise system, where the goal of making money can overwhelm the mandate to do no harm. It shouldn't be another real estate deal that Metro government brokers under the guise of the "public-private partnership". Why should government be in the business of real estate if it should not be in the business of healthcare?

We rely on our legislators to be advocates for protecting patients from the market rather than being lackeys for private healthcare interests who covet the windfall of flipping public long-term care to the marketplace. We deserve better from Jerry Maynard.

While Nashville subsidizes a convention center for tourists it may end subsizing long-term care for its own elderly

Cities don’t have the expertise.

--Mayor Karl Dean's excuse for proposing to sell Metro-run

Bordeaux Long-Term Care to a private corporation

Taking care of tourists, selling out the elderly.

I do not know the history of public nursing home care in Nashville. I would not be surprised to learn that it grew out of the Depression-era New Deal or out of the civil rights revolutions of LBJ's Great Society. But I cannot say with certainty for now that I know those possibilities to be factual. [Note: see "Historical Update" added below].

I can say that when I started following a community-based organization here in Nashville in the early 1990s, Metro-run nursing homes were in existence. That organization, Tying Nashville Together, conducted public hearings with official's regarding Metro's nursing homes and even challenged Mayor Phil Bredesen to raise the pay of Metro's nursing home workers to help assure quality care for the elderly.

So, Metro has been about the business of operating nursing homes for some time now to my knowledge. Unless at least 3 administrations have been malfeasant--including Karl Dean's 2 terms in executive office--and they all hired assisted living staffs that were not qualified for the positions, then how can Mayor Dean now claim that our city has no expertise at running nursing homes? The city has a track record and institutional knowledge in the field. What exactly is he expressing to past residents and their families about the care they received from Metro Nashville's employees?

The context of Mayor Dean's quote is plain, according to the Tennessean. They are clear that, by selling, Nashville will join a list of other red-state cities to bail on public nursing home care, and in the process Nashville will save $10.5 million (maybe to help offset a more expensive new ballpark at Sulphur Dell?). The entire quote from Karl Dean then follows: "In this environment, city-operated facilities just aren’t competitive....Cities don’t have the expertise."

The Mayor's comments belie the Bordeaux facility's own introduction:

Bordeaux Long-Term Care...is a regional leader in the provision of intermediate and skilled healthcare, rehabilitation therapy and palliative care. We are committed to providing our residents with the highest quality healthcare in a comfortable and caring environment. With an impressive team of compassionate caregivers, the Bordeaux Long-Term Care staff is trained to provide a broad range of healthcare services and rehabilitative therapies while promoting creativity, innovation and clinical excellence.

Again, how can residents and their families at Bordeaux have faith in any of these words they might have read in the past when the Mayor himself insinuates that Metro does not exactly know what it is doing in assisting living treatment? What would the Mayor say about Bordeaux's authenticity when he claims a private company can serve residents better than they have? That Metro Nashville was never really genuine about the high quality of care provided to its own residents?

Besides Karl Dean poisoning his own well with the claim that the city's nursing care delivery cannot keep up with private companies, his logic is shot full of holes. Did the city have the expertise that tourism industry giants like Gaylord Entertainment have when it subsidized the building and maintenance of a new convention center and hotel? He did not think twice about Nashville competing with private companies for tourism dollars when he built and operated Music City Center, which serves actual Nashvillians measurably less directly than long-term facilities do.

Maybe it is just easier for Karl Dean to give up on elderly Nashvillians because they have a lot less disposable income than tourists and the tourism industry does. Lest you assume this is no big deal, just remember that governments, in privatizing their services, have screwed up service delivery: utilities, prisons, schools, the military, you name it. There is some kind of horror story involved in every effort to privatize that I am aware of. And the casualties are usually common folk.

I await further details on Hizzoner's latest privatization plan, but it looks despicable, even vicious, right now.




HISTORICAL UPDATE:

Bordeaux Long-Term Care, Metro Nashville's current 420-bed nursing home on 121 acres northwest of downtown, began in 1893 as the successor to the poor farm. It provided various medical services to residents as Bordeaux Hospital until 1967 when its focus became long-term care.

Just Another Red Southern State Inhospitable to Its Elders

But at least Tennessee finished above Louisiana and Georgia. Next year we'll catch Alabama and Mississippi.