My hat is off to Senators Martinez and Kohl for introducing the “Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act” in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday. This is a “call your Senator and urge him or her to support this bill moment!

What’s bad about mandatory binding arbitration in nursing home contracts? For starters, how about the relative inequality in bargaining power between the big corporate nursing home and the person who is doing everything he or she can to secure a nursing home placement for a loved one? IfI hadn’t experienced this exact situation with my own father, I might tend to discount the pressure a family member faces at the time of nursing home admission. All I know is that I had a huge stack of papers which would arrange payment, assign Medicare benefits, confirm my status as power of attorney, etc., in front of me and I had to sign so my father could be admitted. I can assure you, there was no “meeting of the minds” (the law school definition of when a contract is formed) on any of the pre-printed forms.

You know, it wasn’t just me. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, the country’s largest private arbitration company – the American Arbitration Association (”AAA”) – said they frown on agreements like this in nursing homes. Why? Easy, they realized that patients “really are not in an appropriate state of mind” to evaluate these contractual clauses.

So why are the nursing home companies trying to slip them into every contract? They don’t want to pay as much in damage awards when their negligence injures you or a loved one. It’s clear from the coverage in the Wall Street Journal that this is all driven by the bottom line. Don’t kid yourself for a minute. Money saved in lawsuits isn’t going into patient care, it’s going to the corporate bottom line!

What can you do? Call your senator now. Also, consult with counsel before giving anyone a power of attorney to handle your personal affairs. These contracts frequently take your constitutional rights away. Be careful before you or a loved one sign one of these admission contracts; if you have questions, call a lawyer.