This is remarkable—and shocking.
In a scathing rebuke of the [South Dakota] health care system, the Justice Department said on Monday that thousands of patients were being held unnecessarily in sterile, highly restrictive group homes. That is discrimination, it said, making South Dakota the latest target of a federal effort to protect the civil rights of people with disabilities and mental illnesses, outlined in a Supreme Court decision 17 years ago.
At issue are patients with serious but manageable conditions like blindness or mobility issues. Due to a glaring lack of other programs to assist them, they're often tossed into nursing homes designed to serve patients who have more encompassing medical needs. In other words, they find themselves held in a medical prison.
One 45-year-old South Dakota man with diabetes told Justice Department investigators that he wished he could be at home with his wife and daughter, but was in a nursing home because he needed help moving around his house on one leg.
A 73-year-old man in a wheelchair told investigators that he was in a nursing home against his will. “Some of these places are warehouses,” he said, according to the report.
With help, the Justice Department said, such people could live at home, hold jobs and lead productive lives. Instead, they are confined and segregated from society.
Providing such patients with in-home care would often be more cost-effective for states than keeping them in those dedicated facilities. A 45-year-old with mobility issues does not need to be hospitalized indefinitely, one would hope. But because states are sluggish in providing such services—and, it should be pointed out, quick to cut those social programs when hard times hit or another tax cut has been promised—patients are too often shuffled into whatever facilities are left.