Care Fakers
This Week In Blunders - June 1-7
“Child abuse casts a shadow the length of a lifetime.” – Herbert Ward
Toddlers play on busy streets while the elderly languish in filthy, understaffed, pest-infested facilities.
Sometimes it’s unbridled profiteering. Sometimes it’s stupid neglect by a badly run organization. But too often the joys of childhood and golden years are robbed.
Two sorry examples emerged this week: KinderCare, the nation’s biggest daycare conglomerate, and American Health Foundation, which runs nursing homes in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
First KinderCare. Substack’s Edwin Dorsey of The Bear Cave reported this week that his investigation into the chain’s myriad lapses has lawmakers demanding accountability. It’s worth reading in full, but I’ll let him summarize here:
“KinderCare often fails to deliver the safe and nurturing environment it promises parents and taxpayers. The Bear Cave finds that toddlers escape from the KinderCare daycares onto busy roads, are left alone locked inside KinderCare buildings and buses, and are physically, verbally, and sexually abused, with many cases going unreported until bystanders raise alarm or video evidence circulates. In sum, The Bear Cave believes KinderCare is a broken business that harms the children and families it claims to help.”
Wall Street has taken notice, too, with the company’s stock down more than 36% this year.
Then there’s American Health Foundation, its affiliate AHF Management Corp., and three affiliated nursing homes — Cheltenham Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Philadelphia, The Sanctuary at Wilmington Place in Dayton, Ohio, and Samaritan Care Center and Villa in Medina, Ohio.
On Tuesday the company agreed to pay $3.61 million to resolve False Claim Act allegations filed by the Justice Department in 2022. Essentially the chain was accused of collecting Medicare and Medicaid dollars but not servicing the residents as required.
The complaint said that between 2016 and 2018 AHF nursing homes:
Housed residents in “a dirty, pest-infested building”
Gave residents unneeded medications, including antipsychotic, anti-anxiety, and hypnotic drugs
Verbally abused residents
Left residents without meaningful activities or stimulation
Failed to secure resident’s money, clothing and personal items
Failed to provide needed psychiatric care
“Nursing homes are expected to treat them with dignity and respect — not cut corners while collecting taxpayer money,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brenna Jenny.
AHS is a non-profit company, so why all the shortcuts?
The settlement allows the company to keep billing Medicare and Medicaid as long as it cleans up its act. It didn’t have to admit the allegations, and who knows if all those grandpas and grandmas can even remember how they were treated?
So much for doing more with less. You do less with less, you make less with less, and sometimes you put people at risk with less.
Keep the Fyre burning
After serving prison time for perhaps the most notorious vacation fraud in history, Billy McFarland just won’t quit. I’m on his marketing list so I received a couple of text messages this week advertising a scaled-down Fyre hotel vacation:
Here’s part of the latest pitch:
“After news broke a few weeks ago that we were putting the FYRE IP up for sale, we got a message. A small beach resort and the island of Utila, Honduras had seen the headlines—and they had an idea. They have tapped FYRE to bring global attention to this off-the-map gem, programming unforgettable experiences, and simply enjoying life at the edge of the reef.”
This is like getting an invitation from Sam Bankman-Fried to put your crypto back in his pockets all over again. Better off buying a Florida timeshare.
And now, the biggest blunder of the week
You’ve likely heard enough about Elon Musk’s spectacular meltdown over “The Big Beautiful Bill” and President Trump’s highly unpresidential response, but I would be remiss not to log it in Business Blunders for the record.
The richest man in the world and the most powerful man in the world went nuclear on each other this week – with Musk smacking Trump for his relationship with the late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and Trump threatening to kill Musk’s billions in federal contracts – among other nasty barbs.
I previously thought the dumbest thing Musk ever said was telling his advertising customers at X to go fuck themselves. Now he’s put billions worth of federal contracts at risk by unabashedly bashing his ex-bromance partner.
Musk put up several self-destructive posts, but this one was a real gem:
It’s probably true, given Musk’s hundreds of millions in support. But taking sole responsibility for putting a convicted felon in the White House is no way to win back progressive Tesla customers who are still dumping their cars in droves.
Musk has done a memorable job destroying the Tesla brand. Now he’s going scorched-earth on the Trump brand. It looks like too many billions have gone to his ketamine-addled brain. (Drugs in the White House. What would Nancy Reagan do?)
The real affront to every American, though, is that Musk thinks he should be able to buy the White House, and Trump thinks he can sell it, handing out rewards and punishments on a whim.
And this “Big Beautiful Bill” thing that Musk now calls a “disgusting abomination?” Why does it have such a childish name?
"Are there no workhouses?"