Conventional Wisdom

This week I am attending the 59th Annual Texas Health Care Association Convention in Dallas. As a general rule I avoid such endeavors like the plague but my corporate masters had other ideas so here I am.

The THCA represents the interests of long-term care providers in Texas. The purpose of this convention is twofold : raise money for their political action committee and provide an excuse for otherwise responsible individuals to make idiots of themselves out of town. As an attempt to legitimize the whole thing they offer seminars on topics relevant to the industry that satisfy the license requirement for continuing education. I am all over that part.

I am kind of a newbie in this line of work but it became pretty apparent that this convention is all about raising money. It offers several opportunities each day to pony up for the cause. Of course the cause is greasing the palms of maggot politicians that may have some influence on Medicare and Medicaid funding. That's business as usual. The urgency this year is what the maggots are planning to do to health care funding for the elderly in the so-called health care reform working its way through congress. The cuts in funding on October 1st made believers out of the providers and there is almost an air of panic. It appears that our fearless leaders plan to pay for health care for the reprobates by cutting benefits to the elderly. How's that hope and change working out for you?

What a colossal waste of time and money! Generally the participants are not getting anything out of the educational offerings either because they are boring or the participants have other things on their mind. As I sat through one of these courses today I saw very little attention being paid to the presenter. I was bored senseless; most people were texting. We were enduring the droning just to get that piece of paper with credit hours needed to renew our licenses. I expect that each participant for the 4 day convention will spend at least $1,000, including registration, travel and lodging which of course, is tax deductible to the corporations. So therefore you and I, the taxpayers, are subsidizing this folly to the tune of $350 or more for each participant. Not to mention the time away from the facilities for the leaders of the buildings. Time does not stand still in long-term care.

I know I sound like an old curmudgeon! The point of this is that if the long-term care industry is really hurting all that bad and it is really concerned about funding levels for Medicare and Medicaid, maybe they should curtail such waste and focus on managing costs a little better. Maybe it's stuff like this that gives the maggots the ammo to go after our funding. And believe me they don't need much encouragement! So you better get use to it. Reimbursements are going to get tougher to come by and we are going to have to justify the services we bill for. The dems are going take on the long-term care industry just like they did the auto industry. God forbid they take over the care of the elderly!