- His vote as an American citizen. Eight (8) policemen picked Robert up on March 3rd in the morning – 10-10:30am. He was set to vote in the Primary and could not. He asked several times during his “incarceration” at the hospital, but could not. So his right to cast his vote was taken away with all of this.
2. This is continuing in the worst way. People are now talking about Robert needing 24 hour care. He was walking with no problems – meeting friends – to the post office and back – how can someone’s freedom be taken away and their health destroyed – their ability to live on their own taken away – I am overwhelmed with this.
3) The Court’s took away an African American man’s freedom on so many levels. He clearly could make his own decisions on the Tuesday and Wednesday that the police pushed into our home. He also clearly could make his own decisions on the Wednesday and Thursday following that Tuesday/Wednesday ‘incarceration’ before the police pushed into our home for the second time in a week for the same reason to repeat a process because the Somerville Cambridge Elder Affairs group didn’t like the result the first time. Both times the police pushed themselves inside my home with the Court’s suggestion and permission and dragged Robert Bennett out against his will. The Court said if he did not want to come – the police had the Court’s permission to take him out anyway. Robert was very clear with everyone he did not want to go and refused the request. The police made it clear he did not have a choice. Both times they threatened to arrest his wife because she also did not want him taken away.
Robert Bennett was totally able to make his own decisions about his life. The Court took that away by invoking a Health Care Proxy which was invalid and replaced at least twice. The Court gave Robert Bennett’s health care proxy to a woman who is a non-blood related person who was not his wife. To do that they had to invalidate a Health Care Proxy created by Massachusetts General Hospital and a prior Health Care Proxy created by a reputable probate attorney with of which reflected what Robert wanted because they talked to Robert and knew what he wanted. Two witnesses who had known Robert for some 20 to 30 years said so and Robert himself was present when the Health Care Proxy was signed November 18, 2019 and Robert was very clear at that time who he wanted as his Health Care Proxy. Mass General had someone interview Robert for some 30 minutes to make sure they knew who he wanted as his health care proxy. The Court had never met Robert, never talked to him, knew nothing about him and the people making the presentation to the Court didn’t know Robert or his wishes either. This is how they operate in Cambridge MA? How could a man’s freedoms and right to choose be so destroyed. The more this goes on the more appalled I become.
What is clear – there is something not quite right in Cambridge, MA. which is putting its citizens at risk – especially its older, minority – especially African American citizens. if you go into old age with any substantial assets, they will be targeted and taken away from you in the name of “taking care of you” when you don’t need other people to push themselves into your life, take up residence and push their wishes and needs on you.
What happened and the way it happened looks as though it is also Medicare Fraud and the taking away from a citizen his right to decide the choices he wants to make with his health care.
If you don’t go along with the program and max out your Medicare and other medical insurance you will be picked up by the police, your rights taken away from you and among other things – your freedom also as you sit in a hospital with your health declining and it is clear the condition Robert is in today was created by Mass General Hospital following an order of the Court.
This is happening, has happened and will continue to happen unless someone stops it.
In this case the agency controlling all this and carrying out this apparent Medicare Fraud is Somerville/Cambridge Elder Affairs aided by its attorney Jim O’Sullivan. Has he been involved in other such situations like this? Any attorney involved in this should be disbarred. Was he involved in the complaints and law suit which resulted in Cambridge, MA. having to pay an African American woman $10 million dollars in damages because of the way she was treated?
When a person makes a decision that they do not want rehab services as offered by the agency the hospital referred them to -that they would prefer such services at their own home and privately secured and paid for – and the local state agency files for the police to pick up that person and force them into the hospital on a section 12 making the hospital prove the person is sane – not on drugs – not on alcohol – not psychotic, Medicare has to pick up the bill for that hospital stay – that looks to me like Medicare fraud. Forced medical treatment billed to Medicare.
When that person is discharged by the hospital and the next day Somerville/Cambridge Elder Services goes into Court and manipulates the Court System to force that person back into the hospital with no reason and no right, but the Court goes along that is Medicare fraud taking place – that is forced medical treatment which takes away an individuals rights and at the same time increases the Somerville Cambridge Elder Affairs group’s standing with its reporting to the state and others, inflating what it claims as legitimate services, which in fact are spurious and nobody checks – not the lawyer for the agency, nor anyone else affiliated with that agency and the people employed are allowed to make sworn statements which do not represent the facts as they are – but changes them to fit the Medicare requirements for such services – that is apparently Medicare Fraud.
To go into Court – Somerville/Cambridge Elder Services mischaracterized Robert Bennet as “indigent”. Who follows that up? No one. Why bother with an indigent – poverty stricken person. That made it easier for Somerville/Cambridge and any other institutions to present the bills to Medicare for Mr. Bennett. The Court aided these mischaracterizations by allowing this state agency to have a hearing without notifying Mr. Bennett, making all kinds of untrue, spurious, twisted statements to the Court.
To compensate, the Courts appointed an attorney to represent Mr. Bennet after the hearing and after Mr. Bennett was in the custody of the police. An attorney who never met Mr. Bennett, knew nothing about him, and that attorney was appointed after the hearing in which the Court gave Somerville Cambridge Elder Services unbelievable latitude over Mr. Bennett and lied extensively about Mr. Bennett’s wife – in fact slandered and libelous are their accusations.
That Court appointed attorney contacted Robert Bennett after a hearing which sent police to his house to forcibly pick him up and incarcerate him in Massachusetts General Hospital against his will – especially when no medical doctor, agency or anything comparable had declared Mr. Bennett unable to make decisions for himself. It took more than a week for this Court appointed attorney to see Mr. Bennett – too busy.
That attorney has subsequently put Mr. Bennett at risk because she is an attorney who is in and out of nursing homes and then visited Mr. Bennett in the hospital possibly exposing him and others to the coronavirus and that visit took place after she was told Mr. Bennett did not want her to represent him.
After Somerville/Cambridge Elder Affaires went Court with Jim O’Sullivan apparently representing them and hiding relevant information from the Court to gain a decision which they wanted and asking the Court to make a Protective Order without allowing Mr. Bennett or his representatives to appear to present the other side to what they were claiming, the Court by not notifying Robert Bennett and Marceline Donaldson that there was to be such a hearing – for the second time in four days to harass Mr. Bennett to the point of having police pick him up at his home to once again incarcerate him at Massachusetts General Hospital to once again undergo the same thing he had undergone just two days before when he was discharged from the hospita in very good shape, after the first police pick up of Mr. Bennett and after that first forced visit Robert Bennett was discharged from the hospital with no medicines prescribed and a date for a return to check up on his past surgery.
This was forced and fraudulent treatment which was to be billed to Mr. Bennett’s Medicare.
To be able to do this they had to move Mr. Bennett’s wife out of the way so the Somerville Cambridge Elder Services had Mr. Bennett’s wife charged with abuse in this same Court hearing where neither knew about the hearing and were therefore not given the opportunity to defend themselves against such horrid, reputation destroying, life destroying charges.
We believe it is illegal to bill Medicare for forced treatment which the patient and his Health Care Advocate rejects and Marceline Donaldson had been named as Health Care Proxy by Mr. Bennett, but it was not invoked because Mr. Bennett was able to make his own decisions. We believe it is fraudulent to make such charges to Mr. Bennett’s Medicare account.
If Mr. Bennett needed therapy – it was possible to get that at home – even through Medicare. That was not a consideration because there was no such therapy prescribed.
After leaving Massachusetts General Hospital, after surgery, Mr. Bennett took the hospital’s advice and went for rehab to Sherrill House in Jamaica Plain expecting that to be a great experience. The connection between Mr. Bennett as an Episcopal Priest and Sherill House’s Episcopal connection he expected that to be a special experience on many levels. Instead it was a horror story.
If you read other Bettina Network blogs you will see some of the reasons for that horror story. The one we will repeat here – Mr. Bennett left Sherrill House after a stay of some 24 hours because Sherrill House was quarantined – there were patients on the second floor – we were told three or four who had the flu. No one knew what kind of flu and with all of the publicity around the coronavirus, Mr. Bennett took the precaution of leaving Sherrill House rather than being exposed to the flu and his wife concurred. Especially when he heard that several months prior Sherrill House had again been under quarantine because of the flu and apparently “only a couple people” caught the flu at that time so there was nothing to worry about. The outrage at Robert Bennett making such a decision, which he had every right to make on his own behalf as did his Health Care Proxy – was astounding.
After that experience Mr. Bennett and his wife read the reviews about Sherrill House online and were totally freaked out by what they read – people who died because nurses did not respond to their buzzer for a very long time and more.
To call the police and incarcerate someone in the hospital by sending the police to pick them up – twice – because they refuse the service Somerville Cambridge Elder Services tries to force on them when they have said clearly they prefer any necessary services at home and paid for privately, should be a crime. That is an abuse of the police and since Mr. Bennett is an African American from the national experience with the police forces around the country that possibly opened Mr. Bennett to serious physical harm.
In addition, Mr. Bennett’s health has now been negatively affected by all of this. We have witness statements which talk about how Mr. Bennett was walking around Harvard Square with his wife and enjoying the sunshine and their life together before the police forcibly invaded his home on March 3rd and again on March 6th while refusing to give him or his wife a copy of the order which the police claim gave them the right to break down his door and go into the house doing whatever damage was necessary to take him out refusing to listen if he said no and taking him out against his will.
Instead, with the police involvement he has been confined to a very small room at Massachusetts General Hospital – which he shares and is so tight there is no room between his chair and the bed and he goes from bed to the chair, from the chair to the bed. He had a walker, which he no longer has because he can’t walk even with such a device.
Being 87 years old and having been kept in bed from Friday to the next Friday to the next Wednesday and still ongoing, his ability to walk has been impaired and it is possible other health issues may arise because of his confinement imposed unethically by the Courts and illegally by Somerville Cambridge Elder Services.
Is this to scare others into accepting the Somerville Cambridge Elder Services when they come around because you too may be so confined and the police may be called to enforce their right to control your health care by lying, hiding the truth, causing fraudulent claims to be filed on your Medicare insurance causing you to have to pay 20% for services you rejected and Medicare having to pay 80% for services that were forced treatment and hospital confinements which should not have happened.
We have found people – and in reviews also – who complain about the Somerville Cambridge Elder Services because of the way they squander the agency’s money – taking cabs to the bank – and in many other ways, calling it a very amateurish group.
The kind of ignoring and destruction of a persons’ rights is huge and this has been a horrifying experience for all.
It is time to release Robert Bennett from being held in “police lockup” at Massachusetts General Hospital under a protective order which was spuriously obtained. Yes, he is still being held under Police lockup. No one can visit him. His wife can only visit 1/2 per day and then only with a Security Guard and Police present. She is treated in very abusive ways. And most days she is not allowed to visit for one reason or another – if you read other blogs you would have seen when she was told her husband had taken out a restraining order against her and she could not go up to his room under any circumstances. That was not true but she was not allowed to visit that day and the Security Guard who said such a Mr. DuBois also put her out of the hospital.
The attorneys the Bennetts hired did not take care of this and should have immediately filed an emergency motion for his release. They took the case knowing his health would be at risk if they delayed in any way and in spite of that they made their busyness with other things a higher priority which has contributed to this.
It is time for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts General Hospital and all others involved to release this man from confinement and take whatever steps are necessary to reimburse him for what they have caused; make his wife whole after demeaning and disgracing her with their charges of abusing her husband when that was not true and so much more. It is past the time for the Governor, Mayor of Cambridge and others to step in and stop this abuse of this African American family in this case – by the state – this is a state agency.
Mr. Bennett, on information and belief, is not the only person who has been so held in the past – turned into an “indigent” so the forces doing the deed can better access Medicare. It is time for all of this to be investigated by those who do such and it is past time for this cover-up to stop and be uncovered.
The attempt now is to blame others who Somerville/Cambridge Elder Services weaponized to help them in this effort and that also needs to stop.
Robert Bennett needs to be put in an ambulance and sent home IMMEDIATELY, especially given all of the coronavirus warnings to which he would be a primary target. This needs to be done without trying to force Robert Bennett and his family to accept all the trappings being attempted – which are needed to take Somerville Cambridge Elder Services off the hook and leave them blameless so they can continue in their efforts to destroy others – apparently mostly African Americans.
What comes after this for the rest of us? Forced medical care and treatment – whether you want it; need it; in the place the agency harassing you or targeting you decides that should happen. Somerville/Cambridge Elder Services has been hounding this family for years.
It is tough to be African American and live in the Brattle Street neighborhood. Institutional attacks come from many places. Read other related blogs and you will see a fuller picture.
_______________________________________
Tags: Forced Medical Treatment, Medicare Fraud, Sherrill House
