You Can’t Take It With You

Corporate America Is Here To See That You Don’t!

The age-old adage goes: “You can’t take it with you,” but you’d better, at the least, hope you have enough to get you to the point of going. In part 1 of this article, I quoted the following from FORTUNE magazine, written by Harris Meyer and KFF Health News, March 12, 2024 :

“Consumer advocates, researchers, and regulators are leery about this trend. They point to studies showing that nursing homes owned by for-profit companies — particularly investors in private equity and real estate — tend to have skimpier staffing, lower quality ratings, and more regulatory violations. Motivated by these concerns, the Biden administration issued a rule last fall that requires nursing homes to disclose more information about their owners and management firms.”

Here in the Daytona Beach area, there are dozens of senior facilities with new construction running neck-in-neck with the apartment complex construction flying up all around us. One of our newest is called ADEN Senior Living and is as posh as most high-end hotels. Others are “The Greens,” and “The Blake,” just to name a couple of the higher-end, corporately owned, lifestyle offerings.

Leaving this world is the easy part when considering what it takes to ensure your self-preservation up to that time. In a previous article, I said that corporations are attacking baby boomers (i.e., us old people), and I wrote that piece so that I could follow up with some evidence. For example, in a recent Washington Post article, writers Douglas MacMillan and Christopher Rowland wrote:

“Conceived about 40 years ago to give seniors more freedom in their final years of life, the assisted-living industry has been reshaped by real estate speculators looking to cash in on an aging nation.”

The article, Understaffed and Neglected: HOW REALESTATE INVESTORS RESHAPED ASSISTED LIVING, written on December 17, 2023, identifies, or perhaps better said, reveals much of what is already known about the myopic view of corporately owned “patient care” facilities as they hone in on what pleases the stockholders, i.e., dividends, share values, and the bottom line, rather than care provided to the patients.

“In the past five years alone, nearly 100 residents have died after wandering away from these facilities or being left unattended outside, a Post investigation found. State regulators investigating these deaths frequently cited limited staff, poor training or neglect.”

The article is a single instance indicating the systemic greed that stands in the way of (to quote a recent incumbent political candidate) “retiring with dignity.” It is NOT just the nursing facilities. We can include insurance companies (life, health, home-owners, vehicle, etc.), healthcare providers of all types, including vision care, hearing, and scores of healthcare products targeting senior citizens to take as much of their share of our retirement income as possible.

Recently investigating some of the facilities in our area, our many thanks go out to our (possibly soon to be extinct) government agency, the SSA (Social Security Administration), for providing us with the list of facilities in our locale: Find and Compare Providers Near You. In doing so, we discovered that our future holds NO SUCH FACILITY. The ratings on those provided through the SSA list go from one ∗ to five ∗∗∗∗∗ stars, and the contrast in cost between them is surprising. Why so? Because there is little variation in the price from one to the other when doing like-for-like comparisons. Ergo, they all want as much of your money as they can take.

Rather than looking at ratings, we toured several of the facilities shortly after retiring, and the one that I liked the best was called “Riviera.” Whereas Kate and I have a “comfortable living,” we do not have the funds for cruises, long trips, lots of restaurant eating, etc., so when we contacted Riviera, we were impressed with the apartments and the amenities, including the very classy-looking dining room where you have a somewhat eclectic menu for three meals daily, seven days per week. Also included are your utilities (electric, water, sewage, cable, internet), housekeeping twice per month, washer & dryer, and underground parking.

The most recent offering of Riviera are these:

As a veteran, I am given 5% off the base rent or $4200 per month (i.e., $3,900), for a two-bedroom, tw0 bath apartment, with a (very) small kitchenette (that includes the cheapest, well-used appliances that you can imagine), and although functional, there is a base-model washer and dryer.

Plus (if I want my wife to live with me) an extra $925 per month charge for a spouse or partnet, for a total of $4,915 per month

Total rent: just under $59,000 per year with an annual rent increase between 5% to 8%. (The increase for 2024 was 8%.)

So, then, on top of this amount we want to figure in our insurances (life, health, auto, legal, medical, property, etc.), incidental needs (vitamins, cosmetics, and other daily needs), vehicle upkeep, travel, entertainment (online, i.e., Netflix, Amazon, etc.), clothing, personal care (hair, skin, nails), and all of the other niceties we enjoy in our daily living, we must include another $15,000 to $17,000 per year.

In Corporate America

The total cost of living in that facility would be, for the two of us: $76,000 per year, give or take $2000 of discretional spending.

As you can see, we are nowhere NEAR able to afford such, and many others within our community are far less fortunate than us. For example, we have watched some go through the community picking discarded items that other residents set a the end of their driveway. They take the items home, clean them, paint them, whatever it takes to put them out periodically as yard-sale items, just to (as they say) make ends meet.

“Retire with dignity.” Like so many dreams in this land of “endless opportunities,” there still exists that good-old American greed that will put a damper on such things. So we call for the mountains to fall over and protect us, but in the meantime, we must use proper planning and have a good income before we can afford to “retire with dignity.”