By GottaLaff
This is utterly heartbreaking. I live near the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital, always have. It's been a fixture, and I fully expected it would be around forever.
It is a cherished institution and has provided excellent care for countless luminaries, and many, many unknowns in "da biz". I'll let Robert J. Elisberg take it from here:
If one is truly concerned about institutional decisions that result in life and death, the below is the kind of situation where one's attention should be. Not the government, to be sure, but at one of the crown jewels of the private health care industry. And if it's happening here, it's impossible to not think it's happening all over. And therein lies the lesson.
The Motion Picture and Television Fund has announced it's closing health care for the renowned Motion Picture Home. Calling the board of directors a Death Panel might be a bit hyperbolic, to be sure. But after the first 15 residents were transferred out of the facility, five of them died within weeks -- in some cases, days.
You see, a facility like this is beyond a mere clinic, it is their home. When anyone moves from their home, it's emotionally painful. For the elderly, however, especially the most in need, those requiring long-term personal care, many in their 80s and 90s, it's a deeply traumatic experience. One bordering on life-or-death.
Since its first day, the motto of the MPTF has been "We Take Care of Our Own." Who'd have thought that this would one day sound like an order from a Mafia capo. [...]
As Richard Stellar told NPR about his 92-year-old mother, Mary: before full dementia took over "she felt she was back at the movie studio where she worked as a secretary for so many years, and it made her really happy to be there."
So it was with the 79 Long Term Care residents, and the 26 residents of the Alzheimer's unit.
This was their village. It was guaranteed. "We Take Care of Our Own."
Until they were sent pre-eviction notices. [...]
Without question, economic times are bad. But it would seem that a fund that made it through the Great Depression and has as its motto, "We Take Care of Our Own" would find options. After all, if one studio alone can figure out a way to spend $100 million making "Land of the Lost," you'd think that industry-wide fund could figure out how to keep open a facility for those who actually would be lost without it.
In some ways, the issue is at the heart of the demand for health care change in America. When left to private industry or charity, the requirements are overwhelming the needs. Something is deeply amiss in health care when a community of our most needy are evicted from their health care homes, whatever the reasons.
But if one is truly insistent on finding Death Panels, they're not hard to find. All you have to do is look where they actually exist.
They might exist against good intentions and better efforts, but the result is the same. They exist.
Please go read the whole thing.
H/t: David G.
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