“In God we trust.”
The statement should look familiar. After all, it’s the official motto of the United States, and also appears on our coins and paper currency.
The words are meant to remind us that our nation’s political and economic prosperity lies in God’s hands.
These days, a more accurate motto might read like this: “In God we trust. Otherwise, all bets are off.” For by any reasonable standard, these are suspicious times.
How bad is it these days? This bad: A recent Gallup poll found that barely a quarter of Americans (27%) have a great deal of confidence in 14 leading institutions. That’s a 5% drop from a single year ago.
The federal government’s three branches, the presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court all suffered steep declines. After what’s transpired in the past two years, it’s probably not hard to imagine why.
I don’t recall seeing any numbers on public confidence in long-term care facilities. My guess is that if such numbers were to be published, they wouldn’t be rosy.
Not to sound ungrateful, but this industry has a major trust issue on its hands. Some of the animus toward providers is completely undeserved. But there have been plenty of self-inflicted wounds as well.
For a variety of reasons, this industry’s reputation is, to put it mildly, not the best. And that is never a good sign.
For starters, negative perceptions can help direct unfair animus toward all operators. A hospital plans to build nearby? Hooray! A skilled care facility plans to do the same? Well, there goes the neighborhood.
Even worse, the industry’s voice can get tuned out. Last week, the American Health Care Association released a report on hardships that proposed staffing mandates will likely cause.
Providers would need to spend an additional $10 billion per year and hire more than 187,000 new workers to comply, according to the AHCA’s analysis.
That is some devastating stuff. So are we seeing rapid Congressional action to make sure that nightmare scenario never plays out? Or a public outcry about the unfairness of these proposed mandates? Hardly.
Outside of the industry, the assessment largely fell on deaf ears. Why do you think that would be?
By all accounts, we are having a bad year in a bad decade. Inflation is way up, COVID-19 continues to infect millions, Russia is turning the Ukraine into a parking lot, and just might launch a multi-nation war. Topping things off, we may be headed for the most divisive presidential election in history.
People are worried. And suspicious.
The connecting fiber that has held us together as America appears to be fraying as never before. In many ways, we have again become a house divided. Let’s just hope things can get more back to normal, before matters really get out of hand.
For once that happens, we may need this motto:
May God help us.
John O’Connor is editorial director for McKnight’s.
Opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News columns are not necessarily those of McKnight’s.
