The Hunger Games has nothing on the American healthcare system. If you set out to write a nightmarish dystopia that maximized cruelty against the sick, poor, and elderly, you’d struggle to invent anything as brutal as what regular Americans have to deal with when in ill health.
There’s a constant low-level background hum of sadism and sociopathy, but sometimes a situation is so miserable it stands out.
Reports indicate that various nursing homes in Ohio have been transferring their problem patients to a homeless shelter and then effectively abandoning them.
Why are we sending aid to other countries, when we treat our elders like this.
— Nona Ya (@NonaYa3713) April 13, 2026
Disgusting
One patient, known only as ‘Resident #83’, was “dumped” at a homeless shelter in Columbus, Ohio, by Eastland Rehabilitation and Nursing Center staff in 2023. A report on the incident by inspectors for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says:
“Staff from this unit received a call from the homeless shelter with a unique situation and they said they needed some help. The caller went on to say a person (identified to be Resident #83) was dumped on the sidewalk in front of the homeless shelter and they were concerned because she was using a walker, was incontinent, had a large bag of medications and then determined she had come from a rehab center. There was no evidence the nursing home had called the Bed Board in advance of transporting her there.”
The elderly woman was diabetic, incontinent, suffering from a form of dementia, and had a tibia fracture. The report underlines that she was “unclear of what was going on, scared, and not sure who dropped her off there”.
“I can’t believe they would do someone dirty like that.”
This isn’t an isolated incident, with Chip Wilkins, who leads the city of Dayton’s Long Term Care Ombudsman program, explaining that there’s been an “uptick” in nursing homes simply dropping off the elderly at homeless shelters and letting them be someone else’s problem:
“We are starting to deal with it more and more. The facilities are so closely monitored on discharges, but yet they still try and send them to hospitals and not take them back. Or drop them off at homeless shelters … I would say certainly over the last six months there has been an uptick.”
The exact figures on how often this happens are unknown, but Wilkins underlines how traumatic and dangerous the experience is for the elderly subjected to it, saying that “often” these transfers are down to the patient’s Medicaid and Medicare being cut due to Trump’s policies.
For example, one patient who’d been resident at a nursing home for 22 years, who suffered from diabetes, glaucoma, cataracts, and suspected autism, found that his insurance suddenly stopped paying. He was never told he was being taken to a homeless shelter, and was left abandoned, practically blind, with no way to administer insulin, and with no identifying documents.
The patient’s roommate summed it up: “I can’t believe they would do someone dirty like that.”
Sadly, I can very much believe it. Presumably, the thinking is that staff simply do not want the headache of figuring out what to do with an elderly person who’s no longer insured.
So, just dump them on the curb and speed away. Sure, they might die, but hey, what are you supposed to do? Nurse people? C’mon, this is a nursing home. There’s money to be made!
