In a recent e-mail to me the McCaskill campaign responded in detial to the smears being spread about her nursing home audits:
The real story is as follows: Claire was the first State Auditor to ever issue audits solely focused on nursing home inspections. Since 1999, she has issued three audits specifically examining nursing home inspections and eleven audits /total /related to nursing homes. Before Claire became Auditor in 1999, previous auditors had not even audited the Division of Aging, which inspects nursing homes, for 7 years since 1992. This 1992 audit included some findings on nursing home inspections, but did not solely focus or as thoroughly examine inspections as Claire did.
In May 2001, the /Kansas City Star /editorialized: “State Auditor Claire McCaskill had championed nursing-home reform legislation after an audit in which her office found that hundreds of persons determined by the state to have abused or neglected children were working in nursing homes. McCaskill called for legislation to prevent people cited for past abusive practices with children from working with another vulnerable group, the elderly.”
In fact, Claire was so influential that Senator Kit Bond invited her to testify before the U.S. Senate Committee on Nursing Home Reform. Bond called Claire’s audits “critical” to confronting Missouri’s Quality of Care issues.
Many of Claire’s audit findings led to new state laws which:
1. Toughened background checks for nursing homes employees
2. Added mental health’s employee disqualifying list to elder caregiver screening
3. More than doubled fines for nursing homes with repeat violations that went unfixed, from $10,000 a day to $25,000 a day
4. Made it a crime if a state employee tells a nursing home about a planned inspection
5. Forced immediate fines against nursing homes with worst violations, and made these fines stick for the most serious violations instead of being wiped out when a home files a correction plan
6. Required abuse complaints to be investigated in 24 hours .
If you’d like to do some of your own research into Claire’s work as State Auditor, we encourage you to visit http://www.auditor.mo.gov/
Please note that Claire is concerned about senior citizens and the affect of Medicaid cuts on their well-being. Washington has failed to address the healthcare crisis. The Bush Administration cut billions from Medicaid and proposes further cuts to Medicare. The new Medicare part D prescription drug helps drug company profits more than it does seniors. Medicaid is the nation’s health safety net and serves as a vital source of health coverage for over 53 million Americans of all ages, including 992,624 Missourians. Unfortunately, last year, Governor Blunt and the Missouri legislature decided to kick 90,000 Missourians off Medicaid.
Claire’s plan will re-invigorate community and county health centers by allowing young doctors and nurses to get some student loans forgiven by serving proactively towards the preventative medical needs of Medicaid patients.
Thank you so much for writing to us. Please pass this important information on to those that would find it helpful in deciding for whom they will vote in the upcoming election. If you are interested, you can visit to learn about supporting Claire’s campaign through making contributions, volunteering, writing letters to the editor, adding your name to Claire’s online petition for ethics and lobbying reform and registering to vote. We hope to have your support in the upcoming election because it’s time we had a Senator on OUR side. Thank you again for your interest!
Sincerely,
The McCaskill For Missouri Campaign
Cross posted from our Missouri subforum. 
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