New York Times: "Extra Fees Drive Assisted Living Profits"

(Excerpts)

The cost of assisted living centers is so crushingly high that most Americans can’t afford them. These highly profitable facilities often charge $5,000 a month or more and then layer on extra fees at every step. Some examples:

• $12 for a blood pressure check
• $50 per injection (more for insulin)
• $93 a month to order medications from a pharmacy not used by the facility
• $315 a month for daily help with an inhaler.

The facilities also charge extra to help residents to:

• Get to the shower, bathroom or dining room
• Deliver meals to their rooms
• Have staff check-ins for daily “reassurance” or simply to remind residents when it’s time to eat or take their medication
• Some even charge for routine billing to a resident’s insurance for care.

READ MORE:

"Older generic chemotherapy drugs remain scarce, forcing doctors to put a priority on the patients who have the best chance of survival."

IndieDems Comment:

Funny things keep happening on the way to the Republican goal of of turning our health care 100 percent over to the forces of free enterprise. Average Americans keep getting further and further into debt and even going bankrupt, the more the Republican plan is implemented. Could it possibly be that the profit motive does not work when the customers are predominantly unemployed and come from the lower end of the economic spectrum?

And, my goodness. Have American pharma companies suddenly disappeared? I mean, those profit-driven companies can’t even provide enough of the basic drugs that keep people alive? What piece of the puzzle am I missing? Come on, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. Show us that capitalism is always the solution, never the problem.