Oxymorons

I love a good oxymoron, don't you? Obviously Adrian Skiles and John Shore (their real names, not pseudorandom-generated ones) do, for they have compiled "The Internets Best List of Oxymorons" found at
http://www.atlantamortgagegroup.com/oxymoronlist.htm
Browsing this list one finds 'Almost Never', 'Bitter Sweet', 'Common Sense', 'Deafening Silence', Exact Opposite', and hundreds-more every day figures of speech with conjoined contradictory terms. Alas three oxymorons missing from this list until I contacted them were "Care Industry", "Health Care Industry", and "Aged Care Industry".In the past I have submitted several letters to the editor of Brisbane's Courier Mail - A fine Murdoch newspaper (another oxymoron?) for publication. Unfortunately none have so far been published. My last attempt at submitting a letter to the editor was:

"Is aged care an oxymoron?"
Fifteen years experience as an Assistant-In-Nursing definitely leads me to believe that the Aged Care Industry certainly is.

I work for a not-for-profit Aged Care provider that has ambitions of becoming an industry leader, with an aggressive expansion and building program. The Commonwealth government allocates funding for the care of each resident in nursing homes and hostels based on the resident’s individual needs, calculated using a tool called the RCS - Resident Classification Scheme.

I believe RCS funding should be spent providing care to the individual resident, enabling the resident to enjoy as high a quality of life as funding allows.

Aged Care Industry executives appear to have a different belief. My employer deems that only 71% or 72% of RCS funding needs to be spent on delivering quality aged care – this is the industry average, or so my employer informs me. The remaining RCS funding is spent on corporate services, renovating and building new nursing homes and servicing debt.

Nursing and support hours are being slashed, supposedly because the 71% budget is being exceeded. Less care hours means less care. Less time each resident individually receives. Less time to help bathe, and feed a resident. Less time to listen to and help a resident with their concerns.

Should it become necessary to place my elderly parents in care, I shall certainly be asking the aged care provider what percentage of RCS funding do they spend on care hours, and I’ll also be checking out the quality and quantity of food the home provides it’s residents.

What do you think? Should I try to re-submit it for publication again? Am I too verbose? Could you suggest any improvements to this letter? Or am I just flogging a dead horse?

I submitted this letter shortly before my father died in October 2003. The Nursing home I work in and several other Dodgy Brother Care facilities had recently passed their second three-year accreditation, and Coorporate Services had just announced its fitting reward to staff for all their hard work: its intention to slash the roster by 3000 hours per fortnight across six of its care facilities, while employing a couple more staff at Corporate Services to 'grow the business'.

It appears to me that as care goes out the window in the Aged Care Industry to be replaced by documentation, more documentation, standards and accreditation, that Aged Care providers are changing their names to include the word Care in their title. The Aged Care Provider The St. Vincent De Paul Society changed its name to Ozcare supposedly to honour the Blessed Frederic Ozanam founder of the society. Then we have Anglicare Blue Care, Churches of Christ Care, Cook Care, RSL Care, Southern Cross Care, Tricare, and many more careless organisations.