It wasn’t negligence.
I wonder how many of the elderly victims were dual eligibles on both Medicare and Medicaid...?
Hint, hint...
Proving intent is difficult. Proving criminally negligent homicide when you force nursing homes to accept people known to be infected with a disease that kills elderly folks at extremely high rates (~18% for those over 80 years) is TRIVIAL. On its face, it’s a clear and obvious slam dunk case. Each of them. Times tens of thousands of cases. The question then becomes not IF they’re guilty, but HOW MANY cases can be attributed to them. As a prosecutor, your easy answer is to charge with the minimum number of lives lost directly because of the policy. Whether that’s 10,000 deaths or 40,000 deaths isn’t that critical as the punishments will be massive either way.
And they DESERVE it.
1. Put contagious patients in close proximity to the most vulnerable.
2. Wait for the most vulnerable to get sick and die.
3. Save your federal overlords millions in future costs from the soon-to-be bankrupt social security and Medicare programs, as the dead draw from neither.
Provided that the expense of any hospitalizations prior to death don’t outweigh the above savings, the federal government wins.
Follow the money.