June 2024 Speaker Meeting:No Country for Old People
The June East Bay Gray Panthers Speaker Meeting!
Purely virtual - from your home via Zoom. We don't have a recording but here are links to what we discussed.
THE LONG-TERM HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IS ON LIFE SUPPORT. MORE THAN TWO MILLION CASES OF ELDER ABUSE AND NEGLECT ARE REPORTED EVERY YEAR. I am just one of the millions who had absolutely no idea how broken and corrupt the nursing home system truly is until I attempted to navigate it.
-- Susie Singer Carter, filmmaker
Nancy Stevens inspires many of us with her intense commitment to challenge and change the long-term care nursing where she lives in southern California, and by her networking and advocacy with Gray Panthers and change agents around the country. Nancy will update us on California and Congressional legislative campaigns and a new initiative called "The EINSTEIN Option" (Evaluating Innovation in Nursing Homes to End Instiutionalization) from the Live Oak Project, bringing together longtime creative visionaries in the field of long-term care. 
No Country for Old People is a feature length documentary that pulls the curtain back on the nursing home/long-term care industry to reveal a decades old systemic crisis that has been enabled by the nation’s pervasive ageism and ableism.
For over 50 years, care for our most vulnerable has stealthily turned into a cutthroat world of private equity and real estate investment trust-backed nursing homes. To put it bluntly: follow the money. There is a lot.
No Country for Old People chronicles the last harrowing 6 months of my mother’s life in a 5-star nursing home in Los Angeles in 2022 and features powerful testimonials from caregivers, residents, and frontline providers [and] illuminating interviews from the most respected experts on Medicare, Medicaid, Hospice ... to understand where, why, how these abuses happen, and what can be done. Unfortunately, my experience is not at all unique. I am just one of the millions who had absolutely no idea how broken and corrupt the nursing home system truly is until I attempted to navigate it.
Speaker Meetings are regular gatherings on the Fourth Wednesday of most months. We focus on special topics with guest speakers as well as highlighting Gray Panther and partner activities
For many Berkeley events of interest, see Kelly Hammargren's Activist Diary in the Berkeley Daily Planet, at https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/ - click Current Issue for the latest updates.
Currently the Monthly Meeting and Board Meetings are by zoom or phone-in but we are scheduling occasional outdoor and safe in-person gatherings in 2024!
Get in touch with any questions: 510-842-6224 voice or text
