Having a profit motive behind
certain elements of life, certain
areas of care has been a disaster,
certainly in healthcare.
And now we're finding that nursing
homes that are privatized,
of course, are seeking to maximize
profits, cut costs and one way
that they do that is understaff.
And essentially needlessly drug
their residents so
they don't really have to deal with
them too often.
This was a pretty heartbreaking
investigative story from the New
York Times, where they found that
privatized nursing homes are in
fact prescribing antipsychotic
drugs to their residents when they
do not need them.
So here's one specific example.
There's David Blakeney, 63 year
old, was restless and agitated.
The home's doctor wanted him on
an antipsychotic medication
called Haldol, a powerful sedative.
In the prescription for him it
said, add Dx of schizophrenia for
use of Haldol.
That's what the doctor's order read
using the medical shorthand for
diagnosis.
But there
was no evidence that the resident
actually had schizophrenia.
So that the doctors in these
nursing homes are just diagnosing
them with schizophrenia in order to
be able to drug them
with these antipsychotic drugs.
So here's an image that
the New York Times shared of
the prescription in question.
Just to provide evidence and
some receipts for
what's going on here.
Now Blakeney's medical records show
that several people warned that he
was too sedated receiving too many
drugs.
Eight months following his
admission with a long
list of ailments.
And after round the clock sedation,
devastating weight loss, pneumonia
and severe bed sores that required
one of his feet to be amputated.
>> Jesus.
>> Blakeney was dead.
It's just an incredibly
heartbreaking story.
And that's anecdotal
evidence, right?
But this investigation found that
this practice is widespread.
And there is a loophole that
pharmaceutical companies have
lobbied to make happen in order for
these nursing homes to be able to
prescribe antipsychotic drugs
to their residents when they
do not in fact, need them.
So though antipsychotics,
of course,
can be incredibly useful and
necessary for
people who need treatment for
medical disorders.
That is not what we're
talking about here.
We're talking about people who do
not have schizophrenia ,who do
not have the mental disorders,
that would warrant the use of
these antipsychotic drugs.
So I'm going to give you more
details and some broader figures in
just a second.
But Cenk, do you want to jump in?
>> Yeah, so of course they you
question the motive why,
why are they doing this?
And there's again,
two possibilities here.
And it doesn't have to be either or
it could be both.
One is laziness.
Well, it's easier to take care of
them if they're sedated.
And that's pretty brutal.
But yes,
unfortunately people do that.
And then the second is profit.
Well, we can take care of more
of them.
If we just sedate them and throw
them on to different into rooms and
beds where they literally don't
ever get up until they get bed
sores that are so
bad they it requires amputation.
And we'll get house more them and
make more money.
I don't know which one it is or
if it's both, but
neither one's good.
>> Now there are some regulations
in regard to prescribing
antipsychotic drugs, right?
So I mentioned that loophole that
pharmaceutical companies have
fought for.
I'm going to get to that in
a second.
But first, let's go to
graphic seven here.
The risks to patients treated with
antipsychotics are so
high that nursing homes must report
to the government how many of
their residents are on these potent
medications.
But there is an important caveat.
The government doesn't
publicly divulge
the use of antipsychotics given
to residents with schizophrenia or
two other conditions.
So that's the loophole, right?
So if the resident has been
diagnosed with schizophrenia,
well, the nursing home doesn't
have to report that to the federal
government.
Okay, so
there actually wasn't a public
record of Blakeney for instance,
being on these antipsychotic drugs.
And so through this loophole,
the government and
the nursing home industry
are actually obscuring the true
rate of this antipsychotic drug
use within these nursing homes and
among these vulnerable residents.
Now last year, the industry
teamed up with drug companies and
others to push Congress and
federal regulators to even broaden
the list of conditions under which
antipsychotics don't need to be
publicly disclosed.
So they want to ensure that there's
less reporting.
Listen, pharmaceutical
companies were front and center.
They were the ones that drove the
opioid epidemic that the country is
still dealing with today.
And if people think that it
ends there, it doesn't end there.
They find other ways to essentially
loosen regulations that basically
end up with doctors prescribing
more and more of these drugs that
end up harming people, right?
And in the case of these nursing
home residents can end up
killing people, right?
And so what is, what's the motive?
Why would these nursing homes
want to do it?
When you have privatized nursing
homes, they want to cut their costs
and maximize their profits.
So what they do is hire fewer
staff members to take care of
the residents.
And when the staff members
are overwhelmed because they're
understaffed, well,
the easy solution to that which
is incredibly harmful
to the residents is to sedate
them with antipsychotic drugs.
And that's what's happening here.
>> So our members often have
specific expertise in these issues.
And so that's why among the reasons
why we love doing the show with
them TYT.com/join to become
a member.
In this case, Anita 13 wrote in,
we don't even use Haldol as
a chemical restraint in the unless
it's absolutely necessary for
the safety of the patient.
Misuse of chemical restraints is
illegal and I'm disgusted.
>> It's disgusting.
>> Yeah. >> It really is.
>> It is, and remember that
particular person died,
let alone all the other cases.
This affects, but remember,
unfortunately so
many of these stories
come back to money in politics.
Remember Andrew Cuomo had COVID
patients go back into
nursing homes and then we found
out nursing homes were his donors.
So they had money to make even if
they COVID patients were going to
come back in.
It's just an unbelievably greedy
thing to do.
And it was facilitated by
the fact that they
basically bought off the governor.
And later we found out, yeah,
they were apparently there was no,
not much restraint toward Cuomo
would do ethically.
And so but all the things about his
corruption we already knew, but
the press didn't cover that much.
But on the other hand,
New York Times here with a great
story and credit to them for
exposing this problem.
And then finally- >> I gotta give
you one more step before you say
finally.
>> Okay, yeah, of course.
>> Just to give you a sense of how
much of a problem this is.
Take a look at how a nursing home
residents are disproportionately
diagnosed with schizophrenia, and
given these antipsychotic drugs.
Today, one in nine,
one in nine residents has received
a schizophrenia diagnosis in these
nursing homes.
In the general population,
the disorder,
which has strong genetic roots,
afflicts roughly one in 150 people.
And understand that schizophrenia
isn't something that ends up
getting diagnosed for the first
time when someone is in their older
years, when someone's a senior.
If people typically start
showing signs of schizophrenia,
much younger in life.
And it's so clear that the they're
abusing this intentionally to
intentionally sedate the residents
of these nursing homes.
>> There is no coincidence that
large, and Ana is right.
It's the one thing if its
Alzheimer's.
It's completely different if it's
schizophrenia that doesn't
have anything to do with age.
So these disproportionate numbers
make no sense.
My last point was just going to be
guys, the power of the drug
companies are gigantic.
But also why, because of politics
because of money and politics,
they're the number one donors,
even more than banks and
oil companies, etc, to politicians.
And they get monopolies, we're not
allowed to negotiate drug prices.
But then the worst of it is
they're allowed to run amok as they
poison the country with Oxycontin,
and this type of situation,
as we see in this story.
We have got to have a government
that represents us and
not these donors.
Go and help Wolfpack if you can
wolf-pack.com/join, because they're
actually trying to get money out of
politics and without that.
Unfortunately, that poison infects
every story including this one.
>> I wanted to mention one other
thing, Cenk, because what
you're saying is absolutely true.
I mean, you have corporate
Democrats that are completely
captured by corporate interests and
the pharmaceutical companies.
And yesterday we covered a story
about how three corporate Democrats
within the House Energy Committee
voted down the provision in
the budget reconciliation bill that
would allow for Medicare to
negotiate drug prices directly with
pharmaceutical companies.
Thus giving them the opportunity
and the ability to significantly
lower drug prices for
those on Medicare.
>> No, there's no excuse for
it at all.
It's just brazen,
brazen corruption and bribery.
We just allow it, and
it's destroyed our government and
destroyed our democracy.
I was on a Joe Walsh's podcast
yesterday come out in a couple
of weeks.
He's a former Republican,
he used to be a terrible,
very conservative,
the guy who yelled at Obama etc.
And now he's turned on Trump and
he's turned on a lot of things.
He's still very conservative.
But look, there's every and now I
have two servers on the other day,
you guys saw that the shouting
match that I had with them.
But in the beginning of
the interview,
the one thing local servers agree
on is God they hate the corruption.
And so you guys hate it.
We hate it.
The only people who like it
are the corrupt.
The politicians in the media who
are in bed with all these
giant corporations and
who are in the case of the media,
giant corporations themselves,
and it is literally killing us.
That's the effects of it.
We've got to get the money out.