Trump Admin Is Relaxing Oversight of Nursing Homes

Government exists to protect its citizens, to serve them, to keep them safe.  Republicans have spent decades seeking to dismantle the rules that govern our society.  Now with a pandemic upon us, we face the consequences of Republican evil as they continue efforts to harm our most vulnerable.

The Trump administration has been working to relax regulations governing America’s nursing homes, including rules meant to curb deadly infections among elderly residents.  A proposal would loosen federal rules meant to control infections, just as the coronavirus rips through nursing homes.

Last July, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or C.M.S., set in motion a plan to weaken rules imposed by the Obama administration that required every nursing home to employ at least one specialist in preventing infections. The proposed rules — which the agency is completing and has the power to enact — eliminate the requirement to have even a part-time infection specialist on staff.

Why do we have these rules and regulations?

Infection-prevention specialists are supposed to ensure that employees at nursing homes properly wash their hands and follow other safety protocols. They are widely considered the front line for stopping infections, among the leading causes of deaths in nursing homes.

Each year, about 380,000 residents are killed by infections, according to the Medicare agency. Failure to prevent them is also the leading cause of citations that state inspectors bring against nursing homes.

Corporate buyouts of what had been family-owned care facilities has already created a situation where nursing homes are chronically understaffed, patient care is neglected, and nursing homes are treated as profit centers.

The proposed changes are part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to unfetter businesses from regulations. In the case of nursing homes, relaxed regulations are projected to save the industry about $640 million a year, according to estimates from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.

In its first year, the Trump administration changed how nursing homes were fined when they violated rules. Previously, they were typically penalized for every day in which a violation persisted. But the agency changed the guidance for inspectors, encouraging them to hand out a single fine — rather than a series of daily penalties — for most infractions. Under the Trump administration, the average fine imposed on a nursing home has dropped more than 30 percent from $41,260 to $28,405....

But Republicans put corporate profits over our health and lives.  

Attorneys general in 17 states have called the proposed rules a threat to “the mental and physical security of some of the most vulnerable residents of our states.”

The coronavirus has killed 13 residents at a nursing home in Washington State; dozens more residents and employees there have fallen ill. Seeking to prevent further contagion, some states, including New York, have banned most nonmedical personnel from setting foot inside nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, which nationally have about 2.5 million residents.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/business/trump-administration-nursing-homes.html