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Eighteen deaths an hour. Over 3,000 deaths a week. Over 50,000 deaths in less than five months. Over 45,000 Americans in nursing homes have died since the start of the pandemic.
It didn’t have to be this way. The nursing home crisis was preventable. Donald Trump’s gross incompetence in dealing with this pandemic turned nursing homes into death traps in this country. These deaths are more than just a statistic. Each one represents a human being who is now gone from this earth.
But instead of taking action to protect seniors, Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell have stated that their focus is on protecting the owners of nursing homes from legal liability.
Social Security Works is protecting seniors from Wall Street greed! Chip in $7 to fight back!!
Why are Trump and McConnell united against seniors, on the side of the private equity barons whose unquenchable greed is driving this crisis? Simple: Republicans work for Wall Street, not America.
Private equity’s strategy is simple: by hollowing out nursing homes, firing staff, lowering wages, and packing more patients into each room, they extract the valuable assets, and leave a husk of a facility behind.
Low-wage workers paid starvation wages in these facilities are forced to work in multiple facilities to make ends meet. They go from one facility to another to another--not because they love changing bedpans, but because this is the only way to make ends meet.
These are exactly the conditions COVID-19 needs to spread like wildfire. So even if COVID is not in a nursing home now, it will be.
But the government has done nothing to address the nursing home crisis! Social Security Works is launching a campaign to force the Senate to take this crisis seriously. Chip in $7 today!
Weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed the HEROES Act, which includes critical funding to protect nursing home residents.
But what happened? It’s sitting in Mitch McConnell’s self-declared ‘graveyard’ of a Senate.
Mitch McConnell won’t address the nursing home crisis.
Susan Collins won’t address the nursing home crisis.
Steve Daines won’t address the nursing home crisis.
Thom Tillis won’t address the nursing home crisis.
These Senators are cowards, who won’t stand up to Mitch McConnell and his billionaire bosses on Wall Street whose only priority is protecting their profits while tens of thousands of seniors die.
How many times can we watch these Senators on television throw up their hands and say “We can’t do anything about it! But don’t worry, the only people who are dying are old people.”
But I do worry--because seniors are people. Seniors have dignity and lives, and they deserve the full protection of the government that they create.
McConnell and Trump don’t care how many seniors die. The only thing they care about is protecting nursing homes and their investors from lawsuits.
These corporations created the conditions that have already killed tens of thousands of seniors. It’s up to you and me to end the nursing home crisis. We need to raise our voices so that those politicians in Washington DC can’t ignore us. And if they try to ignore us, we have to remember in November.
Together, we’re going to save seniors from Republican greed. Chip in $7 today to fight back!
Thank you,
Alex Lawson
Social Security Works
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