Investigative nonfiction · Elder justice
Bought for Parts: How Wall Street Is Profiteering on Your Mother’s Pain is the lead investigative title from Ars Moriendi Project. It exposes how private equity firms, real estate investment trusts, and a web of related-party transactions have hollowed out America’s nursing home industry — and what families, workers, advocates, and policymakers can do about it.
By Richard T. Beeman. Published by Ars Moriendi Project. ISBN 979-8-9956900-0-9.
What This Book Exposes
Behind the quiet hallways of America’s nursing homes is a financial machine designed to extract wealth from the frailest people in the country. Bought for Parts follows the money — through shell companies, captive landlords, management fees, and staffing affiliates — and shows how the business model itself produces neglect.
Readers will learn:
- How private equity ownership changes care, staffing, and survival rates.
- How REITs and related-party leases move Medicare and Medicaid dollars off the care ledger.
- How regulators, inspectors, and courts have been outpaced by corporate complexity.
- Where families and advocates can still push back.
Why This Matters Now
More than one million Americans live in nursing homes, and the majority of those facilities are now controlled by investor-driven chains. The same extraction playbook is spreading into hospice, home health, and assisted living. Understanding how it works is the first step toward stopping it.
Who This Book Is For
- Families navigating placement, billing, and care decisions.
- Advocates and organizers fighting for accountability at the state and federal level.
- Journalists and researchers tracing ownership and follow-the-money stories.
- Attorneys and policymakers building legal and regulatory responses.
- Clinicians and chaplains who see the human cost up close.
Companion Resources
Bought for Parts is designed to be used, not just read. Each book pairs with free tools from Ars Moriendi Project:
- Family Field Guide — a step-by-step checklist for evaluating a facility, reading a survey report, and documenting concerns.
- Advocate’s Legal Toolkit — model letters, records requests, and pathways for escalating complaints to ombudsmen, state agencies, and CMS.
- Ownership Lookup Notes — guidance for tracing corporate structures behind a specific facility.
Download the companion resources →
About the Author
Richard T. Beeman is an independent writer, publisher, and advocate focused on for-profit exploitation in healthcare. He served five years as a chaplain at a retirement facility and now publishes Everyday Elders and leads the Ars Moriendi Project, a nonprofit publishing and advocacy initiative centered on elder justice.
Buy the Book
Bought for Parts is available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon.
ISBN: 979-8-9956900-0-9
A Bookshop.org listing will be added when distribution goes live.
For bulk orders, classroom sets, or signed copies, email contact@arsmoriendiproject.com.
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