Imagine if Emeritus CEO, Granger Cobb, would have said, “I am 100% confident in the training, care and services that we provide. That is precisely why my own mother lives in this community.”

Imagine if Emeritus CEO, Granger Cobb, would have said, “I am 100% confident in the training, care and services that we provide.  That is precisely why my own mother lives in this community.”     

A follow-up commentary on the PBS Expose of Emeritus and Assisted Living

Last week, officials at the IRS proposed changes that would exempt themselves from the new Affordable Care Act; the very law that they are now empowered to enact and enforce.

Make sense?

The law is apparently good enough for the goose, but the gander want no part of it.  In fact, in testimony to Congress last week, acting IRS commissioner Danny Werfel, said exactly that. 

Quoting, “…I would prefer to stay with the current policy that I’m pleased with rather than go through a change if I don’t need to go through that change.” Uh huh. Builds your confidence, doesn’t it?

Let’s go into an alternate universe for a moment. What if Mr. Werfel pledged to be the first person, and his family – the first – to be subjected to the rules and provisions of the Affordable Care Act? 

Furthermore, that each employee of the agency, charged with its implementation, would be subject to the Act before any other citizen.  Hmmm…OK, then.  Better. The analogy is sound, isn’t it? 

If every CEO of every senior living and healthcare company would have the confidence and certainty in his or her company’s training, systems, policies and staff so as to have their own family members living in the communities over which they have charge; how much more confidence would the public have in their communities? 

How much stronger would Emeritus’ position have been in the recent PBS expose, if each of their corporate team would have said the same?  Hmmm…OK then.  Better.  Much better. I know, I know…how naïve of me.  

How silly a concept:  to have the leaders of companies, industry and government, be willingly subjected to the very policies, rules and services from which they make their living.  Well, that would require earnest belief in what was being sold.  That would require truth, integrity, and the courage of one’s convictions.  It would require the knowledge – the surety – that those very convictions and beliefs were being lived out at every level of one’s company, or agency.  

Last week, PBS aired an expose on several disturbing incidents at Emeritus communities.  Like many of you, I watched, waited and desperately wanted for that moment when I could say, “Ah ha! See there?!  ‘That’ counters your biased claims!  ‘That’ speaks volumes of truth that drown out the accusations and insinuations!”  But “that” moment never came. 

I don’t know where Mr. Cobb’s family resides.  Nor where most of our industry captains’ families reside.  That is absolutely a private and very personal choice.  We absolutely have no right to that information.  But I do know that Bill Gates uses Windows.  I know that Richard Branson flies on Virgin Atlantic.  So do their employees and their customers.  That knowledge speaks volumes about their belief in their product. 

That gives testimony to the conviction of their services. “Hello, my name is Naïve, and I was just wondering…where does your family live?”