it's cheap oil from iran and when washington sanctions, tyrone, it's a case of 2 birds with one stone because washington is also indirectly then sanctioning china. and you wonder why there are 6 chinese warships currently in the gulf region keeping a very close. this is austin. it's the the and i once had a young woman working for my family as a nanny, she decided to take a class in english as a foreign language. and one day after class,

she came home with a very pointed question. she said that her teacher had said offhandedly during the class, that the students, all of whom were foreigners, should be careful of americans. why? because he said, they treat their pets better than they treat their parents. she wanted to know if this was true. in many cases, it is sadly true. many americans don't even consider taking care of their parents and when they age and are unable to take care of themselves, there's nowhere else to go. but what happens when a person tries hard to take care of her aged parents? she finds that facility that also provides nursing care and assisted living. but then finds that the facility is corrupt. the industry is corrupt, and the government doesn't do anything to correct it. what she does is she blows the whistle. i'm john kerry. ok, welcome to the whistle blowers the

. 2 2 2 our guest today is not a famous name or an industry leader. she's a woman who loved her father and he wanted to do right by him. susie tell epsky is an attorney whose father developed dementia later in life. she sought out the best medical care for him and when it became clear that he couldn't take care of himself in his own home, and she liked the medical expertise to care for him and hers. she looked for the best retirement home for him where he could receive the memory, care that he needed. she found what she thought was a great place for him, a government nursing home. but then she noticed that he wasn't acting like his usual self. she said that rather than deal with him and his medical issues, the nursing home plight him with powerful drugs to restrain him and to cause him to spend most of his time in a state of unconsciousness. finally, the home transferred him involuntarily to another facility, a transfer that the polanski family had never agreed to. susie to, let's get responded by doing exactly what she should have done. she sued the health

and hospital corporation of mary and county and their private partner, american senior communities, arguing that her father's rights had been violated. a trial court dismissed the case, but a federal court of appeals so that it could proceed mister til etzky died in 2021. but the case was allowed to continue on. the issue was really quite simple. it was whether a person can use section 1983 of the federal code to sue a nursing home that accepts federal medicare and medicaid funds. in the end, the by the administration argue that congress did not intend to allow section 1983 lawsuits when it enacted the nursing home legislation. but by a vote of 7 to to the supreme court of the united states disagreed. and it ruled that suzy to let ski was right, and the by the administration was wrong. we're happy to have suzy to, let's the with us today. susie, welcome to the show. thanks so much for having me,

john. thanks for joining us. life really does take some odd twists and turns. i want to begin by reiterating that you are an attorney, but you do not specialize in medical law or nursing home litigation or the like. you entered into this case because you were a daughter, concerned about her father's medical wellbeing. you found your father, what you thought was a great nursing home that could provide him with the care that he needed. and then what happened? what was it that 1st made you think that something was amiss? yes. well in the summer of 2016 and i noticed that he had rapidly deteriorated and that he wasn't able to eat or walk or talk um, you know? and so it was just a rapid decline, and it was quite suspicious to me. and so that's what started this whole thing. your father had been drug, he was eventually transferred against his will and against your will to another

facility. and you started thinking about suing. certainly that's exactly what you should have done, but i know how daunting that is. i know that, you know how daunting that is. it's very time consuming. it's very expensive, but you went forward with that anyway. what were you thinking when you 1st made the decision? were you confident enough that you were right and there would be an attorney out there to help you in this very specialized field as well? i was the attorney to pursue this case. initially. i could not find, you know, another attorney to help me for many, many months. you know, i tried many attorneys, i, i 1st of all started off with medical malpractice attorneys because i was not sure who the actual owner was of the nursing home. and it's managed by a private corporation called american senior communities. but then i actually found out that it was owned by the health and hospital corporation of marion county,

which is a municipal entity of marion county indiana, which essentially is indianapolis. and after that, i started thinking about, wow, you know, this seems as though the government is violating my father's rights under finra. the federal nursing home reform act. and, you know, i know about section 1983. it's a very powerful civil rights statute. the most powerful one that we have, and i thought to myself, these could be very much civil rights violations. so then i tried to find civil rights attorneys, but again, i couldn't find who to help me until the very end. i found one attorney probably a month before, you know, we filed the lawsuit, which i thought was, you know, the statute limitations. so. um, you know, i did all the research and everything. so i, i thought we need to get this into the northern district of indiana and federal court, but really we needed to get it to the 7th circuit because that's how you establish precedent. so i wasn't sure what was going to happen in the northern district. i

figured that the defendants were going to file a motion to dismiss, which they did, and they won that. so then what it was right, one of the pen demik started um, and so i was very, very worried, of course about my father when the pandemic started because nursing home patients were really the ones that were most affected by the pandemic. um, but 3 days after our case got dismissed, you know, i a miracle happened in my life and i'm an appellate attorney from the prestigious law for arlene porter contacted me on a sunday night and she said he was interested in helping us take it to the 7th circuit, she thought we could possibly get it reimbursed. and so of course i wanted his help and that's, you know, basically what happened. and it's very unusual for an appellate court to overturn a lower court. more than 98 percent of lower court decisions are upheld on appeal.

the original court in which you filed the case, as you said, threw it out. and so you went to the 7th circuit court of appeals where you confident a victory on appeal. you won. there of course, you know, but the entire process was like 5050 chance because there was one circuit. the 3rd circuit that had recognized these types of, uh, you know, causes of action. it was really the only one at that time in the country. so that, that case originated from pittsburgh, pennsylvania as the grammar case. and so i figured we had a 5050 shot, you know, so i wasn't necessarily confident, but i certainly thought, you know, we could prevail. so i was very happy that this law firm stepped in and the appellate attorney, his name is andrew todd. he is really a brilliant legal lines. and with him i felt much more, you know, confident that we could succeed. and we certainly did. we won 3 to 0 and we did change the law. wow. after you won at uh, at that level,

the federal appeals court level, the biden ministration appealed part of that verdict, forcing your case, the supreme court. is that right? the, it wasn't the ministration. it was the petitioners, the petitioner for the health and hospital corporation of marion county and their private partner american senior communities. so they petitioned uh 1st or sure, i to the united states supreme court and they were successful. the supreme court did grantham sir, she or i? so what happened was, you know, i, in, you know, of course, each side would like the support of the solicitor general's united states. right? and the client here is the department of health and human services. you know, of the, by the end in ministration. so we did try to convince them to come in on our side, the other, you know, side, you know, the petitioners also try it. and what happened was they split the baby, so they ended up coming. have a guest coming in against us on the nursing home questionnaire. helped understand when this case got to the supreme court. it really blew up because the question was

not just about the nursing home question, it was actually about the 1st question that was presented to the court was really a monumental question. is whether anyone who is the recipient of any of the sage, the social safety net program type of laws like medicaid, medicare, chip, snap, tanf, whether any of these individuals came to states or in the county as i'm written, municipalities for violations under, under, under those uh, pieces of legislation, so it for civil rights violations. okay. the rights, so using section 1983. this had been a long established civil rights president. so what they were trying to do was reverse about 55 years worth of civil rights president. so this would have disenfranchised, and you know, deprived about a 100000000 people of their long standing civil rights. and it would have been absolutely catastrophic if we had lost this case, especially for disabled people. so the case, you know, start off with

a very narrow question about nursing homes and the rights of nursing home patients and publicly own nursing homes and whether they can enforce their rights under the federal nursing home or format. but the actual big, monumental question is really why the supreme court took this case. and so everyone under the son who's an expert, you know, in civil rights or in a nursing home and much senior civil litigation. but in, you know, supreme court advocacy, you know, all these experts sought, we were going to lose this case, you know, all the discipline rates, you know, advocate scene on the top organizations, civil rights organizations. you know, they all thought we were going to lose this case. they thought that the supreme court had signaled by taking the case that it was going to reverse on question one . and of course then there by we lose that question too. so i went from a very little chaise to a monumental case real quick, and then in the end the victory was lopsided. it was $7.00 to $2.00. so besides

the victory on, on your part, the one that was specific to your father's care. what did that victory mean on a, on a broader level, a score on a broader level. it basically reaffirms, you know, about 55 years worth of civil rights, a precedent that we've had in this country. the supreme court, i said, came in on the side of the people, you know, they came in on the side of the little guys. and, you know, i'm so glad that i thought all the way to the end. you know, i was under immense pressure to somehow back out of this case, you know, which would've been pretty much impossible for me to do, you know, to somehow pull it out of the supreme court. but i, as the responded really, was not in that position. the petitioners could have pulled it at any time, but they decided to pursue it full throttle. and you know marion county up to understand which is, you know, indianapolis sits in marion county, they're one in the same. they are control 100 percent by democrats. so this was a very odd case for a bunch of democrats to pursue. and they teamed up with the indian attorney general

tab rokita, who is a very ultra right wing conservatives. and he brought in 21 other state attorneys generals, you know, general to support them. okay. so it was a very odd pairing on the other side, you know, the people who are normally, you know, at odds with each other teen job, you know, to basically take away the rights of the american people. so that's one of the reasons why everybody thought we're going to lose. i mean, you know, we're taking on it'd be the federalist society initiative. they, they've been targeting for a long time, you know, to, to take away the rights and civil rights of americans. and to essentially shift more rights to the state governments. so it would have allowed state governments basically to administer these federal programs. really, however, they want without much supervision or you know, compliance or anything. so because the only other option is for the department of

health and human services to define them and they usually would never do that because then it would her even more people, you know. so that's the only option i. so the best way is to force states into compliance. um, you know, for the rights of, uh, beneficiaries of these social safety net programs is of course for the beneficiaries to be able to suit themselves. right. so it's very critically important, especially for disabled people who, you know, do receive help from the state governments, you know, through from these federal programs like medicaid is a federal matching program. so a bulk of the money comes from the federal government and the state governments are supposed to contribute something and they're supposed to abide by the federal law. but, you know, there are instances where the state government, you know, they have some flexibility and how they run these programs. so they might decide, well, we're not going to pay anymore for wheelchairs. we're not going to pay anymore for this kind of, you know, cancer treatment, you know, for,

for certain individuals. and normally, you know, beneficiaries have been able to suit for deprivation of their rights and, and that's what marion county was trying to do. they were trying to eliminate that option for everyone. you have to understand the reason why mary county really was doing this is because they have a scheme here in the state of indiana where most of the nursing homes are publicly owned. i would say about 9394 percent, so it's like over $500.00 nursing homes and the state is very, very unique. and the reason they do that is because they're able to, you know, to pull in extra medicaid money from the federal government. so their county own nursing homes, but they own them just on paper and they hire private companies to manage them. okay. and so they pull in all these extra money. and what they do is they divert most of the money for their own county uses, and they don't use it for the nursing home patients. okay. and what has happened

here in the state of indiana is we get more money than any other state in the country. and medicaid funding for these nursing homes, yet we have the worse nursing homes in the country. yeah. at the out. that was a problem for me. that's a big problem. stay with us. susie, we are going to take a break. susie to live ski initiated a case that has help literally hundreds of thousands of americans living in nursing homes, all across the country to protect their human rights and civil liberties. we're going to go to that short break and when we come back, we're going to talk to her about why the mainstream media ignores this important case. say to. 2 2 2 the soon as 2016 numerous monuments to serve as soldiers in poland, ukraine and the baltic states have been destroyed or vandalized fish their stuff by

pharmacy. certainly within yeah, i'm not sure or even some others could ask if i really so that's the most on whether it's it's especially almost between the devoted is government, denies the role of. so it'd be assumed just in the victory of a non system. and is it raising historical memories of world war to think about it for the 41 years today? although it did seem the nice to raise names and trustees would remain things in people's consciousness forever. but as long as russell phobia is profitable and brings dividends, you are willing to have a to rewrite the past. yes. yeah. i don't think that's the i'll provide. just leave me a message. i need to see because of the facts do i need to leave it to police to play with the video that they've given us. but you

can read the select the a sort of system. mm hm. that a to was more something when you usually choose when i put on what is your solutions on how much we get the key points, why you cannot mostly lose another school kid is less quotes. it's the most. we have much to say that the with on that the

the welcome back to the whistle blowers, i'm john kerry onto we're speaking with suzy till epsky, who initiated a case that the supreme court of the united states ended up deciding that allowed americans to sue states that receive medicare and medicaid when their rights are being violated, suzy, it's good to have you with us. thanks for staying. thank you very much. before we

get to the media coverage, i wanted to ask you a question. as, as an attorney, i haven't gone through the details of your case. it seems very clear to me that you were right. and the other side was, was wrong. the state of indiana, the by didn't ministration. the defendants, americans have a constitutional right to redress of grievances. we have civil rights, human rights, civil liberties at least were supposed to. were you surprised at the big guns that came out an opposition to your suit? you mentioned a moment ago about 21 state attorneys general. it must have been frightening and puzzling to know that you were having to take on the power and the authority of not only the state of indiana, but also the us department of justice. and the attorneys general of all these other states, but a major american law firm decided to help you. and that may be what pushed you over the top. tell us about that as well. you know, i,

i don't think i was that surprised that um the state of indiana was supporting of health and hospital corporation in marin county. what was surprising was that the binded administration through us under the bus. when i came to the nursing home question, i was shocked by that very disappointed because you know, the, by the administration claims that they care about the elderly nursing home patients and, you know, they want to improve conditions. but that was not demonstrated at all. and this last year they actually wanted to deprive nursing home patients of their rights and . and uh that was, that was shocking. um now on the other hand, with the all the attorneys general that came in, you know, all of them were very, very ultraconservative. mm hm. um, you know, right wing, um, you know, republican attorneys general and they're really we're pursuing the federal society agenda with this case. you know, they're the adult. there's this push to sort of, you know,

move the power away from the federal government more to the state. right. and the other thing that they're trying to do is deprive americans of their civil rights, you know, so there's been this push now for, for many years to deprive you know, to chip away at the rights of the american people. really, i mean, you know, both on at the federal level and at the state level. so you know, it's been going on for many years. so i guess i wasn't that surprised at the big guns that came out. this was really the quintessential david versus guy as a battle and ended to me. this was the battle for the soul varnish. and really because it was really gonna exemplify you know what we are as americans, you know, do we believe that, you know, we should protect the elderly and the disabled and make sure that all of us have our civil rights intact? you know, or are we gonna basically allow the governments government entities like marion county to abuse and explore waves and you know, deprives um,

you know, the elderly nursing home patients of their rights because that's what's happening when you have in the state of indiana is basically the systemic abuse and neglect of nursing home patients, right? the elderly and the disabled them these nursing homes is systemic and nobody has come to to help these nursing home patients certainly not the federal government, the department of health and human services office of inspector general, which i know, you know, people have reached out to them in the past i have as well, you know, i've reached out to the d o j, you know, they've totally ignored us. you know, it's not like i didn't pursue other avenues to sort of complaint about the situation here. once i found out what was going on, one of the things that so puzzling to me about this case is that it was completely ignored by the mainstream media and the national media. there was a lot of coverage in the local media, of course, as well as in the specialty media focused on the supreme court. but no news of this

case ever appeared on the lakes of cnn fox news and miss nbc, the washington post the new york times. they all have full time justice reporters. so why do you think they ignored the story? well, i mean, that's hard for me to answer because i'm not sort of an expert in it. you know, the media. i mean, i personally think that, you know, that is a failure of american journalism not to cover this story. this was a monumental story. this was going to affect the rights of a 100000000 people, this very important civil rights. just if we have lost this case, i can guarantee you there would have been the most vulnerable marginalized, you know, disenfranchised people in our society who really depend on the social safety nets. it would have led to death for some of these people, if they were not able to vindicate their rights in, in the federal court. and the fact that the american media totally ignored this, i mean, just shows the, sorry, state of american journalism. you know,

because this, this was, you know, a supreme court case that they ignored and, you know, my theories, they ignored it deliberately. you know, this has to do with poor people, you know, and you know, it didn't fit, maybe a narrative. uh they, they like to go for me. certainly once we weren't the case, they should have covered it. but again, it didn't fit the narrative of the sort of left leaning liberal media, right. here's a case where the supreme court actually made the right decision came in on behalf of the people know they are really just like to criticize the supreme court in united states. and that's what's been happening in the last few years with the supreme court. it's just been it been a constant assault on the supreme court. and in this case, and many other cases, the supreme court didn't make the right decision. and, and uh, you know, they, they should be commended for that, but they did their job correctly. let me ask you about that. this decision is monumental. as you said, it gives people now the right to sue under section 1983 to best of your knowledge

has that happened? have there been a significant changes made in the industry since this decision? you know, there are only about 1500 or so nursing homes that are publicly owned across the country for more than half of those are i think more than half are here in the state of indiana. wow. so is going to make a big difference here in the, in the, in, in, in indiana and also i know, in pennsylvania and some other places it might affect, you know, some other kinds of facilities. you know, that are state on, you know, don't know this, this will definitely now have impact certainly. so i mean health and hospital corporation, marin county has a choice. they can either improve the quality of care, or they will be subjected to civil rights lawsuits. and no civil rights lawsuits you know, can come with pretty healthy penalties, you know, um and also uh with tentative damages. susie, thank you so much for being with us. it's a pleasure having you on. thank you so much for having me. it was

a pleasure to be here. thank you. susie, tell us the story proves that one person can indeed make a positive difference in the lives of countless others. it all comes down to simply doing the right thing. some issues really are black or white right or wrong. if you know in your hearts that you're right, you have to go with it. american commentator dennis prager said, recently quotes, if you build a society in which children honor their parents, your society will long survive. suzy, till etzky honored her father. and in doing so, she honored so many mothers and fathers across the united states. that's what it needs to be a whistle blower. and thank you to our viewers for joining us for another episode of the whistle blowers. i'm john kerry onto we'll see you next time. 2 2 2 the,

to take a fresh look around his life. kaleidoscopic isn't just a shepherd, reality distortion by power to division with no real opinions. fixtures designed to simplify will confuse who really wants a better wills. and is it just because it shows you fractured images, presented to this, but can you see through their illusion going underground can the name of the best of them, but they got more of the see at the end of this, i guess i didn't mall what had a little more of a school i thought of it either i wanna say is and some of them like that is some, what are the media you got alone? i'm glad you know you got one way just under then use it in video sorta my idea

that fits on a k. i knew i love is that goes to you that i mean, i think going on because the i'm a persona of a be that me court by that i, i didn't go to almost the end to see the best. so that sort of i, that out of in, to see if they have, and the single man throw some of a manual and all that, i don't want to lose the remainder. i'm not, you're not as a guessing, mazda minutes off on, you know, you see them, joe likes it and say, i couldn't move them, but these are, let's see. let me look to see like tennessee, but i didn't get it out of the submit on. so being at that point, i see on there most to go boss i need to, i'm let me, sadie. one of the subs have been in the media, mckinney and all those need, but i really need the what somebody that get some given with your my policy. ok. so you see the goals in, i mean either it is by you say know things on

a certain different things that are going i think go into the setting for the headlines right now. and i'll ask you international 26 people that killed overnight and is really strikes on the southern gaza city of con eunice. of course, every day now with children and bearing the brunt for the casualty told at the cottage and palestine is now killed more than $12000.00, a member of the israeli parliament suggests the country is approaching cause of maybe 2 humane. we put that off the debate with a pair of guests or starts with the occupiers. is the never starts with the people . is this an occupation for you to say that always you have to do on october 8th, because pull out and stop the occupation. that's a hobby simplicity unrealistic interest of paul's assumption that all someone is going to stay home by on sit around the campfire, do you plan.