Why should we be concerned? With 1.6 million people residing in 17,000 nursing homes (11,000 of them for-profit businesses), the opportunity for actual harm to our nation's loved ones is staggering. A recent Congressional study found that 550,000 residents were in homes cited for instances of severe abuse. Yet, the public and Congress have failed to act for years. Ron Panzer has written a detailed article clarifying the trends in health care that have fostered the abuse and neglect of the elderly. Panzer writes that: "There are two completely opposing visions of what health care is supposed to be. One vision takes a utilitarian approach to evaluating life and encourages the killing of undesirable patients through various means; the other vision reveres life without the need to evaluate it, recognizes the intrinsic worth of life and refuses to incorporate the killing of any patient as a valid medical practice."

"Those who cherish the lives of those they serve embrace a vision of love and caring; they naively find it extremely difficult to admit or believe that others may have such a completely opposite view to their own; they are therefore quite easily misled, manipulated and controlled by those who consciously wield the utilitarian vision from their positions of power in health care administrations." While many facilities fail to report crimes against the elderly, the Breaux-Hatch Elder Justice Act requires such reporting to law enforcement, along with requiring criminal background checks and provides funding for education and training of law enforcement, prosecutors and forensics experts as well as funding to encourage education of professionals entering the field of health care services to the elderly. Chronicling the rise of the HMO exemption from liability, all the way to the creation of the Medicare hospice benefit, Panzer shows that there is a real war going on in health care, with each side fighting for supremacy. While the Justice Department professes to rein in corruption in health care, Panzer exposes the reality that the U.S. Justice Department is actually fostering the continuation of fraud within the health care industry. The complete report can be read online at: http://www.hospicepatients.org/Lynching-the-Elderly-and-Disabled.html Hospice Patients Alliance is a not-for-profit volunteer patient advocacy organization working to assure the highest quality of end-of-life care and to prevent exploitation and harm to patients.