Dear Governor Rauner:
Surely this has nothing to do with your ties to a federal nursing home trial from 2014, right? While you were still candidate Rauner, the private equity firm GTCR you retired from in 2012 was linked to shady nursing home chain Trans Healthcare, Inc. A federal bankruptcy judge accused your old company of orchestrating a “bust out” scheme to let the business die and evade liability for at least $1 billion in alleged wrongful death and abuse suits on behalf of the estates of elderly victims. You downplayed your role in Trans Healthcare and denied wrongdoing. The accusations that you let GTCR play vampire to 200 nursing homes around the country—plundering them and causing care to deteriorate and residents to die—that was just your opponents playing politics, right? Just like now you’re being blamed for letting Illinois’s elderly care facilities rot.
Here’s the thing: the state’s nursing home crisis extends far beyond Quincy. But I know you’ll visit all of them throughout Illinois, because you’re an honest, straightforward guy, right? Just because you’re a superrich North Shore venture capitalist with expensive taste in wine and upscale real-estate doesn’t mean you’re not who you say are in campaign ads. You’re just an everyman clad in a black leather jacket and blue jeans, cruising around the state on your Harley-Davidson—a man who’s decided to roll up his flanneled sleeves and fix the state’s myriad problems. So keep on truckin’.
