I'm sure the private firms have put on their dog and pony shows demonstrating all the good things they have done for the nursing homes they now manage. But have you seen their financials, have they showed you where they got the money to make the improvements they boast of?

The mission of a public-owned nursing home is to provide quality care to their residents; the mission of private-owned nursing home is to earn money for their shareholders.

How do they do that? To generate cash for investors, private-owned nursing homes often sell the nursing facility's property and lease the buildings back, which results in lease payments that are 75% higher than before the buyout. Also, cash on hand (which nursing homes need to pay for unexpected expenses) declines by 38 percent.

The Sauk County nursing home building loan will be paid off in three years, so why would we want to turn our nursing home over to a private firm that will pile on years of debt? Eventually, after the private firm has made all the money it can, it will leave the nursing home with so much debt that it will have to close.

According to the American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living, of the 1,000 nursing homes that have closed from 2015-2019, 75% were for-profit; only 25% were not-for-profit.

The non-profit National Bureau of Economic Research analyzed Medicare data of more than 7 million patients over the period 2005-2017. Their study found that private ownership of nursing homes resulted in 10% more patient deaths, an increase of 10% in what patients have to pay, a greater decline in patient mobility, and increased levels of pain.

On May 8, The Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Health and Human Services announced a joint investigation into the role of private equity and "corporate profiteering" in healthcare.

Please, you who are serving on the Sauk County Board, take into account what I have written here. All of the above figures are from non-profit and government research firms that have spent years following the trends in private ownership of nursing homes.

Just use your common sense: How can a for-profit company make money by buying our Sauk County nursing home?

Jean Lentz,
Reedsburg