Yep, you're right. Ratting them out would be the right thing to do.

I've been fighting uphill battles for the "right thing" all my life. I've always, always, been the nail that sticks up highest and gets pounded down.

This nursing home is the best one around here, they do a lot of good for a lot of people. It's a family operation - the nursing home director's wife is the head nurse there, and his brother is the home's doctor.

Those people are also the big frogs in the puddle of a 2000-member Baptist church here in town. They practically run the place, and they're very well liked. They're good people in that way - but I learned a long time ago to keep my billfold pocket buttoned when I'm around "church people".

Now, I could blow the whistle and get an investigation started. That would be in the news, and probably even on the TV news - and I doubt much would come of it. There'd be a fuss about it for a while, and they'd get a fine - maybe.

But a lot of the businesses and people I deal with around here would decide I'm an absolute a-hole. That church would be having prayer meetings, trying to get me damned right away.

Bottom line is, this kind of fraud didn't cost me anything directly. It costs us all, indirectly - because it rips off Medicare and makes health insurance premiums higher.

If an "excellent" nursing home like this one is pulling this chit, I think it's going on all over the country. Thousands and thousands of health providers are doing the same thing, or worse, and it needs to be fixed on a national scale or not at all.

The rules need to be changed so this can't be done, because people, generally, aren't going to complain when it's the government and insurance companies getting ripped off.

And I'm not either.