BACK TO THE DARK AGES

ANYONE PONDERING HIS OR HER SUNSET YEARS WILL REMEMBER THE expose of the shocking conditions in nursing homes circa 1970. Woefully undertrained workers strapped patients to hard-backed chairs, fed them cheap diets and kept them in a whimpering state of sedation. There were tales of urine-soaked hospital gowns and of false teeth collected at night and thrown into a communal vessel that patients had to fish through in the morning. All this and more was documented by the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. The next year Congress passed legislation to address decades of abuse of the elderly by profiteering nursing-home...