The newly formed healthcare branch of the Service Employees International Union delivered a stern statement to the prospective owner of Manor Care Inc. on Thursday. It discouraged the company from running ads that disparage a new children’s healthcare bill.
Manor Care, which is in the process of being acquired by the Carlyle Group for $6.3 billion, supports ads against a bill to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Long-term care providers have been fiercely opposed to the House bill because it advocates freezing Medicare Part A payments to nursing homes next year.
In a letter to the head of the Carlyle Group, SEIU Healthcare Chair Dennis Rivera noted that Manor Care executives will receive $254 million from the buyout deal. It is wrong for a company to give millions to a CEO from taxpayer dollars and then encourage a campaign to cut funding for children to protect its profits, Rivera wrote. It was not clear Thursday what response, if any, Carlyle would have to the campaign.
