The Reasons Behind the Storage of Thousands of American Disabled People in Nursing Homes

About three years ago, a Senate health committee released an unsettling report: A 1999 Supreme Court decision and the Americans with Disabilities Act were flagrantly violated by several states’ practice of keeping patients in nursing homes who had major but treatable conditions like diabetes, blindness, and mental illness. This was often done against the patients’ wishes. Rather than allocating federal and state Medicaid funding for community-based or home care to these patients, most states chose the easier and less expensive route of sending them to nursing homes, many of which had beds available and were eager to take in new patients.