Lunsford ad rebuts opponent's ad

FRANKFORT — Bruce Lunsford started airing a TV ad Wednesday in response to a critical ad run by his opponent, Greg Fischer, in the Democratic race for U.S. Senate in the May 20 primary election.

Lunsford said the Fischer ad that questioned Lunsford’s business practices was not fair.

Lunsford noted that a Paducah Sun editorial entitled “Mud” criticized the Fischer ad and that an article in The Courier-Journal said the Fischer ad used an actress to provide the voice of an alleged victim of nursing homes run by Vencor, a company formerly owned by Lunsford.

Vencor was a multimillion-dollar health care corporation that went through bankruptcy reorganization in 1999. In 1998, some of Vencor's nursing homes began turning away Medicaid patients to make room for private-pay patients.

Lunsford said he did not know that staff members at the nursing home were evicting poor patients. He apologized and flew to Florida, where one of the publicized evictions was taking place. Eventually those patients -- fewer than 100, according to Lunsford's campaign staff last year -- were invited to return. The company paid a $270,000 fine in Florida.

The U.S. Senate seat in play is now held by Republican Mitch McConnell, who is seeking re-election.

Here's the ad.

--Jack Brammer

Comments

[the Internet is not Lunsford's friend]

The Tampa eviction case was part of written Vencor corporate policy that the company planned for Vencor nursing homes across the country. Many non-political sources documented this fact in 1998 and 1999.

The Florida Senate Committee on Health Care: "This project emerged, in part, as a result of the negative publicity generated by a corporate policy announced during late 1997 by Vencor, Inc., a national long-term care company that operates in Florida, and implemented during early 1998, to discontinue care for nursing facility residents who are Medicaid recipients. This policy was to be implemented nationwide."
http://www.flsenate.gov/data/Publications/1998/Senate/reports/interim_reports/pdf/98-28hc.pdf

Charlie Hanger, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc., The IRE Journal: "This whistleblower [who claimed that evicting Medicaid residents was a new Vencor corporate policy] supplied memos, and reporters began hearing that stockholders were putting pressure on the company to increase profits. It became clear that this example was symptomatic of a larger problem within the corporation and the industry. Profits seemed to be more important than patient care."
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3720/is_199905/ai_n8830119

University of Pittsburgh Team-Written Report, Ethics and the Business Environment; Vencor Incorporated: Patient Eviction
"Top management decided that they wanted to fill beds only with patients who could afford to be there. In addition, employees received bonuses for successfully evicting patients. Top management chose to implement policies that appear questionable and possibly illegal. In addition, the company’s method of eviction reveals lying, cheating, and falsifying documents."
"It makes them appear as a company that doesn’t care about society and only wants to make a profit. They have no sense of social corporate responsibility, no sense of charity, or guilt. How would you like it if you were told "to pay privately or move out". Well, that’s what Vencor told 11 Medicaid patients to do in Owensboro, KY(Evictions at KY Nursing Home Broke Law) in addition to 14 patients evicted in Savannah, GA for Medicare and private insurance running out (Nursing Home Chain Faces More State Probes)."
http://www.pitt.edu/~agle/Teaching/wsjcc.html