An open letter to the Sauk County Board of Supervisors regarding the proposed sale of the Sauk County Health Care Center:

How can a private firm profit by taking over a nursing home? After all, you can't get rich running a nursing home...or maybe you can.

Economist Eileen Appelbaum, PhD, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington D.C., who has studied private equity in healthcare for over a decade, has described core practices used by private equity firms.

Appelbaum said that when these firms buy a healthcare company, they typically plan to sell the company in 3 to 5 years. She said these firms buy a facility using "a little bit of money" and "a lot of debt." Once the private equity firm owns the hospital or nursing home, it loads that debt onto the purchase and the debt becomes the responsibility of that facility. The firm has no responsibility to repay the debt, Appelbaum explained. What that means is that the hospital or nursing home will be saddled with greatly increased debt.

And how do the patients fare? On cbsnews.com: "At private equity-owned nursing homes, an 'enormous' increase in death rates" revealed that "PE-owned nursing homes are cutting staff and drugging patients more, particularly with antipsychotics, theorizing that increased use of such drugs could reduce the need for staff to tend to patients."

Once the SCHCC is sold to a private firm, that firm can profit from selling or leveraging the assets of the Health Care Center, and there is nothing we can do about it. They can reduce care for the residents, and, if we even manage to find out about it, again there is nothing we can do about it.

So, my questions to all of the County Board Supervisors who plan to vote "Yes" to sell the Sauk County Health Care Center: How are you going to feel when you see SCHHC's assets drained away? How are you going to feel when you see "Overdoses, Broken Bones, Bedsores", which happened when a private-equity firm took over nursing care for the state of Pennsylvania? How are you going to feel when Sauk County's only nursing home* is closed for good?

How are you going to face the people of Sauk County who voted for you?

Jean Lentz,
Reedsburg

*Editor's note: Just to be clear, the author means the only nursing home owned by Sauk County.

Editor's second note: There are many fine privately owned nursing homes in Sauk County. But the history of large companys buying a health care facility only to leverage a profit is not ideal. Sauk County supervisors are keeping secret who they are negotiating with, how are we, the citizens of the county, not know they are in fact, dealing with such a company?