According to this article in the Chicago Tribune, before purchasing a nursing home, Rauner’s health care company had only $150,000 in total declared liabilites.

After some years of mismanagement his liabilities rose exponentially:

Jannotta, GTCR and other onetime owners of Trans Healthcare are defendants in the bankruptcy case, accused by plaintiffs’ attorneys of selling the chain in a complicated transaction to dodge liability for what grew to more than $1 billion in tentative wrongful death judgments secured by the estates of several nursing home patients. GTCR attorneys argue that the firm was far removed from the operation of the nursing homes in question and contend the plaintiffs’ lawyers are on a fishing expedition to extract payouts from deep-pocketed businesses.

And perhaps that is the problem, everyone is “far removed” from taking proper care of nursing home patients.

Read the article here:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-bruce-rauner-nursing-home-trial-0928-20140926-story.html

But the real problem is, we are building more and more nursing homes and assisted care centers and we are pushing the need to find bodies for these institutions in lieu of in home care.

I was at the nursing homes when my father had to be ther, when my grandfather had to be there, and when our church did a lot of volunteer work?  What do you see and hear?  Residents pushed up in wheel chairs in front of a TV, that’s all.  If you talk to them, they all want to go home, if not to their own home, then to a child.

China has a law an adult child must visit an elderly parent.  The parents like the law.  Perhaps the US should push some of that and get these elderly people back into their own home or into the home of a caring relative.