The Biden administration is expected to deliver an ultimatum to nursing homes on Wednesday: if you want to receive funding from Medicare and Medicaid, you must mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for all employees.
Medicaid is the primary payer for nursing home care in the U.S.
The announcement, previewed by CNN, represents the latest escalation in a high-stakes pressure campaign to protect the nation’s elderly. Over 133,000 nursing home residents have died of COVID-19 since the outset of the pandemic, yet hundreds of thousands of the employees that care for them are unvaccinated. Government data shows that there are 1.3 million Americans who work for nursing homes that participate in Medicare and Medicaid; 40% of them have not been inoculated.
The move to tie Medicare and Medicaid resources to vaccine requirements is the first time the federal government has threatened to withhold funds in an attempt to force compliance.
CNN provides context:
Biden began taking an increasingly muscular approach to boosting vaccination rates last month amid a plateau in vaccinations and the rapid spread of the Delta variant, including requiring all federal workers to attest that they have been vaccinated or be regularly tested for the virus. A slew of private companies have also since announced similar requirements for their workers.
“We are on a wartime footing here. We are leaning in to making sure we are taking the steps that we can to ensure the health and safety of Americans and we will continue to do so,” [Carole Johnson, a senior official on the White House’s Covid-19 response team] said. “Delta’s not waiting and so we’re not waiting.”
Johnson told CNN the new regulation will go into effect as soon as next month and added that the federal government will work with nursing homes and unions representing workers to make the shots more easily accessible.
Many businesses, municipalities, and hospital systems have adopted limited vaccine requirements. The pressure is working. The nation’s rate of new vaccinations has nearly doubled over the past month.
Earlier this month, Dr. Erin N. Marcus, a Florida based physician, called for linking federal funding to healthcare providers to vaccine mandates for their workers. In a Washington Post op-ed, she wrote:
Some health-care workers may say this violates their rights. But patients have the right to receive care in a safe environment, and the risk of contracting covid-19 from an unvaccinated person is real.
Working in health care is a privilege, no matter a person’s specific job responsibilities. No other field allows a person to help others at their most vulnerable. By wearing a hospital ID badge, we all represent medicine. It’s up to us to embrace the miracle of scientific research and its potential to get society through terrible challenges like the current pandemic. No one else can serve as a better example of how to behave in a way that will protect our communities.
