we saw that...

more bob dean & rep. william daniel chicanery

louisiana state senator joe mcpherson dist 29

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I came across your Bob Dean blog post this AM and was very interested. You do have part of your story on Bob Dean correct re: his nursing homes. Fact is, in the state of Louisiana he OWNS 7 nursing homes. The other fact is HE approached FEMA regarding the use of The Bentley to be used as an evacuation shelter for his nursing home residents from Lake Charles. (as well as the residents from his nursing homes in New Orleans he had already evacuated to Lake Charles before Katrina hit) The fact is FEMA turned him down because of fire safety issues in the hotel.

The bottom line is he wanted to double dip the system. If the Bentley would have been used as a hurricane shelter he would have received federal money for keeping HIS nursing home residents there and any subsequent damage that would have been done. So he would have not only received money from the State Medicaid/Medicare program while his residents were being taken care of, but he also would have received financial assistance from FEMA because he had a "designated" hurricane shelter.

Whatever your imagination can come up with about him owning nursing homes is true and much worse. How do I know? I work for him. I am a nurse in one of his facilities.
The truth is we never have enough supplies, food or staff to take care of our residents. He doesn't give a damn about the residents or the employees.

Those of us in the facility I work at are only still in it because we are afraid what will happen to our residents if we left. The staff of our facility had to contact the Mayor of our city and FEMA to get us evacuated from Hurricane Rita because we had been waiting all day for "Dean's Buses" to arrive to take our residents and staff to safety in Alexandria.

If we had not contacted our Mayor, only God knows what would have happened. Only because our staff loves and cares about our residents we were able to get outside help. On a daily basis the staff at our facility buy supplies ourselves, out of our own pockets to take care of the residents - soap, lotion, deodorant, diapers, even food. We also purchase office supplies that the nursing staff needs - binders, pens, stethoscopes, blood pressure cuffs, etc. None are paid what the average rate of pay in our area is.

We always are short staffed - and work our collective butts off. Not for Mr. Dean but for our residents. When a right hand man of his was confronted about our low pay at a staff meeting several months ago his reply to the staff was "We can get anyone off the street to come in and do what you do for no pay." I promise if you look and dig into his nursing homes that is where his undoing will be. He is a crook, a liar, a bigot (who at one point instructed his administrative staff to create a nursing staff of whites only), and cares about only manipulating the state and the federal government to be able to get all the money he can. Unfortunately, in Louisiana as far as nursing home owners go - he's pretty much like the rest. Toward the public they seem "caring or even compassionate" but - they all have one thing in common a plantation attitude of using and abusing employees and residents while making the most money they can.

Don't be fooled by his "new facilities" he's building either, that is only his way of having to follow new state legislation that requires nursing home owners to put a certain percentage of profit back into the facilities they own. If they spend millions building beautiful, brand new facilities then they have met the requirement and can back to business as usual of having no supplies or no staff and keep raking
the money in. Dig deep you'll be shocked at what you find.