It's Back: The Holiday Inn vs. Nursing Home Fallacy

This week the news media lost its collective mind over a silly, old social media trope about a guy who says he won't live out his days in a nursing home, rather he'll simply stay at a Holiday Inn.  It's cheaper, and the service is better, so it says.  But it's a false narrative.

I wrote an extensive blog on this in 2016.  The e-mail I copied into that post from three years ago and the "new" Facebook post getting all the current attention are identical, word-for-word.  It's certainly not original, it's specious and misleading, and the numbers are (still) way out of date.

A TV station in Houston, KHOU, even found an internet post from 2004 with nearly the same wording as this old-is-new-again misleading social media joke.

​You can't compare "independent retirement living" with CARE in a nursing home - or an assisted living facility.  Hotel staff - nor cruise ship staff - will bathe and dress you, help you to and from the toilet, nor will they make sure your dementia doesn't lead you out the front door into traffic - or over the rail into the ocean - in the middle of the night.  Once you need CARE, you'll be on the curb - or the dock.

CLICK HERE to read my 2016 blog post for more details on why this is a ridiculous idea.