The DOJ’s COVID-19 Nursing Home Inquiry Is Nakedly Corrupt – By Samuel Bagenstos and Margo Schlanger (Slate) / Aug 31 2020
Last week, the Department of Justice sent widely publicized letters to the governors of four states—Michigan, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania—seeking information about nursing homes and coronavirus infections. The DOJ justified the request as part of an evaluation of whether to open a formal investigation under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act. This does not appear to be an ordinary independent investigation, though. In fact, there’s every reason to believe the DOJ letters are partisan attacks on opponents of the president.
The backdrop for all this is the COVID-19 pandemic’s devastating effect on life in nursing homes. The coronavirus pandemic has hit nursing homes hard and highlighted the inhumanity of our system of shunting away elderly and disabled people in isolated congregate institutions. The New York Times estimates that at least 68,000 people have died due to COVID in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities—41 percent of the total number of deaths attributable to the virus in this country.
The devastation underscores a truth we have known for years: Institutions separated from the mainstream of society—nursing homes, long-term care facilities, psychiatric hospitals, or jails and prisons—cause intense harm to the people who are confined there. They rigidly control the lives of their residents, limiting such mundane daily liberties as the choice of when to turn out the light at night or with whom to eat dinner. They often limit opportunities for employment, education, and personal development. And they frequently harm the physical and mental health of those who must live there—with the tragic consequences we are seeing today.
Government investigations of the poor conditions at congregate institutions—and efforts to promote community-based alternatives so that individuals would not be forced to live in those facilities—would be very welcome. The coronavirus pandemic makes the need for such action especially acute.
Continue to article: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/doj-covid-nursing-home-inquiry-trump-corruption.html
