Kaiser Health News
GOP Presidential Hopefuls Use Trump’s Covid Record to Court Vaccine Skeptics
Darius Tahir and Daniel Chang
Wed, 29 Nov 2023 10:00:00 +0000
Former President Donald Trump often seems proud to advertise his administration’s record on speedily developing covid-19 vaccines.
On the campaign trail to win another term in the White House, though, he also has knocked the use of those very vaccines. In October, for example, he unleashed a barrage of social media attacks on Ron DeSantis’ pandemic record by reposting claims that the Florida governor — who is running against him in the Republican presidential primaries — was too active in vaccinating Sunshine State residents.
In a further twist, Trump simultaneously circulated an MSNBC article suggesting DeSantis wasn’t vaccinating his constituents enough.
Trump’s tap dance — touting Operation Warp Speed’s success at developing vaccines while criticizing vaccine use — is emblematic of how pandemic politics are intensifying broader vaccine politics. Republican presidential candidates currently trailing the former president in polls are contorting their messaging to court the party’s vaccine-skeptical voters. No one embraces, without qualification, the utility of a public health measure that has saved millions of lives.
Like Trump, even the more establishment candidates can’t seem to avoid embracing the anti-vaccine leanings of the party’s base. Take Nikki Haley, who formerly served as governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the United Nations and has been rising in the polls. In the waning days of the Trump administration, she was pro-vaccine. But by the end of November 2021, in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, she repeated dubious anti-vaccine claims: for instance, that the vaccine could undermine a woman’s fertility. (Studies consistently show no effect.)
The GOP has gained the allegiance of “a minority of people who feel very strongly about the safety of vaccines,” Robert Blendon, a Harvard professor of public health, told KFF Health News. Presidential candidates are trying to use this sensibility as “a cultural issue” to signal distrust in scientists, other experts, and government authority in general, he said.
The resulting dynamic carries the risk of reaching beyond the current election cycle to affect public health policy in years to come, leading to lower rates among schoolchildren and seniors of vaccinations that protect them from measles, shingles, and HPV. Even as candidates try to weaponize this rhetoric, they’ve had little luck in changing the former president’s front-runner status.
A recent KFF survey of adults about their plans to get vaccinated against the flu, respiratory syncytial virus, known as RSV, and covid found that partisanship remains a key predictor of how people view vaccines. Confidence in the safety of the updated covid vaccines split sharply along party lines, with more than 8 in 10 Democrats saying they trust the new shots, compared with 1 in 3 Republicans.
But unease about covid or the vaccines is not Republican primary voters’ top issue — Blendon said concerns around the border, crime, and inflation are — and it’s not clear vaccine-focused attacks hurt Trump.
“I didn’t like his response to covid,” says an Iowa business owner featured in a critical ad from a well-funded political action committee that questioned Trump’s handling of the pandemic. “I thought he probably got led a little bit by the bureaucrats,” he says, hitting Trump on his bragging about the development of the vaccine and contrasting Trump unfavorably with certain governors the man in the ad thought performed better against covid. (Images of DeSantis, otherwise unnamed, flash by.)
The result? The ad “produced a backlash” and, when audience-tested with focus groups, improved the former president’s support, according to a memo summarizing the political action committee’s attempts to dent the front-runner.
Candidates nonetheless are trying to make hay, acknowledged Joe Grogan, who led the Domestic Policy Council during the Trump administration. But “I think people have a lot of other targets for ire about the pandemic.”
“Trump is not at the top of the list for Republican primary voters,” Grogan said. “He’s not on Page 2. Or 3, or 4. It begins with the media, the public health bureaucracy, or Big Tech companies.”
Voters have strong, yet divided and sometimes inconsistent, opinions. Some, like Joshua Sharff, 48, of Chesapeake, Virginia, are opposed to the covid vaccines and to candidates who support the shots as safe and effective. Sharff describes himself as a conservative voter who intends to support the Republican nominee for president. Though he’s vaccinated, he said, “If you’re a governor or a president and you tell me that I have to take a vaccine that has not been tried, that has not been tested, and ignores the science, that’s a problem for me. You’re taking away my freedoms as an American citizen.”
These positions have led Sharff away from Trump — and toward DeSantis, who has promoted anti-vaccine and anti-public health positions in his quest for the nomination.
Trump “pushed the vaccine very hard and recently came out, when he began to get pushback on it, that it was somebody else’s fault,” Sharff said. “That’s not true.”
Other Republican voters said the vaccine is not key to their vote.
“It will not sway my vote one way or another,” said Kimberly Hunt, 59, of Melville, Tennessee.
In chasing these voters, some candidates are distancing themselves from initial, pro-vaccine positions to embrace outspoken views against the shot. Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur, started out as a vaccine cheerleader. But then he flipped, coming out against vaccine mandates and saying this summer that he regretted getting vaccinated. (His wife, a doctor, said she had no regrets.)
The most vocal of all is DeSantis.
Appearing on the right-leaning “PBD Podcast” on Oct. 30, DeSantis attacked Trump and “the corrupt medical swamp in D.C.” for overselling a vaccine that, despite the initial federal guidance, could not prevent infection or transmission of covid. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the vaccine for anyone 6 months and older to protect against serious illness.
Though he initially encouraged people to get vaccinated in early 2021, DeSantis pivoted months later, banning vaccine passports for businesses and government entities, and later approving legislation prohibiting vaccine mandates in the state. That fall, he also appointed a new Florida surgeon general, physician Joseph Ladapo, whose guidance on covid vaccines contradicts CDC recommendations. DeSantis formed a Public Health Integrity Committee to assess, and generally dispute, federal health recommendations.
When the CDC released new vaccine guidance in September, Florida responded with its own advisory casting doubt on the safety of the boosters.
This anti-vaccine positioning hasn’t helped DeSantis. He has been losing support nationally and is generally polling third behind Haley and Trump in New Hampshire, a key early primary state. He headlined a “medical freedom” town hall in Manchester on Nov. 1 with Ladapo as a special guest.
Among the candidates remaining, DeSantis may be the most famous convert to the politics of anti-vaccination, but, with this subject, Haley has more experience.
In the 2021 CBN interview, she said “mandates are not what America does.” But the forceful declaration is merely the end of an ambivalent record, and, for critics, demonstrates her willingness to get in sync with the demands of the GOP base. As a state legislator, she supported 2007 legislation that included a mandate for HPV vaccines before voting against it; and later, as governor, she vetoed an effort to promote those vaccinations.
Bakari Sellers — now a commentator on CNN, but at the time a lawmaker who spearheaded that bill — told KFF Health News, “That’s the biggest Nikki Haley issue that there is: She kind of has her finger in the air.”
The issue of vaccines may affect the general election: Even as Trump defends his vaccine record, it’s nevertheless clear he has support from the anti-vaccine crowd. An analysis by Politico, for example, found overlap among donors to independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is staunchly opposed to vaccines, and Trump.
The willingness among politicians to assail what’s traditionally looked on as a foundational achievement of public health is likely to lead to turbulence for doctors themselves. Allison Ferris, a primary care physician and an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University, said people should be listening to their doctors and not to presidential candidates about whether to take the new covid vaccines. But that message is hard to deliver in the current climate.
“It is a tricky position to be in,” said Ferris, who co-authored recently released guidance advising doctors to counsel patients that frequent covid vaccination will likely become a necessity.
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By: Darius Tahir and Daniel Chang
Title: GOP Presidential Hopefuls Use Trump’s Covid Record to Court Vaccine Skeptics
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/trump-covid-vaccines-primary-opponents/
Published Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2023 10:00:00 +0000
Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.biloxinewsevents.com/medicaid-unwinding-makes-other-public-assistance-harder-to-get/
Kaiser Health News
How To Find the Right Medical Rehab Services
Rehabilitation therapy can be a godsend after hospitalization for a stroke, a fall, an accident, a joint replacement, a severe burn, or a spinal cord injury, among other conditions. Physical, occupational, and speech therapy are offered in a variety of settings, including at hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, and at home. It’s crucial to identify a high-quality, safe option with professionals experienced in treating your condition.
What kinds of rehab therapy might I need?
Physical therapy helps patients improve their strength, stability, and movement and reduce pain, usually through targeted exercises. Some physical therapists specialize in neurological, cardiovascular, or orthopedic issues. There are also geriatric and pediatric specialists. Occupational therapy focuses on specific activities (referred to as “occupations”), often ones that require fine motor skills, like brushing teeth, cutting food with a knife, and getting dressed. Speech and language therapy help people communicate. Some patients may need respiratory therapy if they have trouble breathing or need to be weaned from a ventilator.
Will insurance cover rehab?
Medicare, health insurers, workers’ compensation, and Medicaid plans in some states cover rehab therapy, but plans may refuse to pay for certain settings and may limit the amount of therapy you receive. Some insurers may require preauthorization, and some may terminate coverage if you’re not improving. Private insurers often place annual limits on outpatient therapy. Traditional Medicare is generally the least restrictive, while private Medicare Advantage plans may monitor progress closely and limit where patients can obtain therapy.
Should I seek inpatient rehabilitation?
Patients who still need nursing or a doctor’s care but can tolerate three hours of therapy five days a week may qualify for admission to a specialized rehab hospital or to a unit within a general hospital. Patients usually need at least two of the main types of rehab therapy: physical, occupational, or speech. Stays average around 12 days.
How do I choose?
Look for a place that is skilled in treating people with your diagnosis; many inpatient hospitals list specialties on their websites. People with complex or severe medical conditions may want a rehab hospital connected to an academic medical center at the vanguard of new treatments, even if it’s a plane ride away.
“You’ll see youngish patients with these life-changing, fairly catastrophic injuries,” like spinal cord damage, travel to another state for treatment, said Cheri Blauwet, chief medical officer of Spaulding Rehabilitation in Boston, one of 15 hospitals the federal government has praised for cutting-edge work.
But there are advantages in selecting a hospital close to family and friends who can help after you are discharged. Therapists can help train at-home caregivers.
How do I find rehab hospitals?
The discharge planner or caseworker at the acute care hospital should provide options. You can search for inpatient rehabilitation facilities by location or name through Medicare’s Care Compare website. There you can see how many patients the rehab hospital has treated with your condition — the more the better. You can search by specialty through the American Medical Rehabilitation Providers Association, a trade group that lists its members.
Find out what specialized technologies a hospital has, like driving simulators — a car or truck that enable a patient to practice getting in and out of a vehicle — or a kitchen table with utensils to practice making a meal.
How can I be confident a rehab hospital is reliable?
It’s not easy: Medicare doesn’t analyze staffing levels or post on its website results of safety inspections as it does for nursing homes. You can ask your state public health agency or the hospital to provide inspection reports for the last three years. Such reports can be technical, but you should get the gist. If the report says an “immediate jeopardy” was called, that means inspectors identified safety problems that put patients in danger.
The rate of patients readmitted to a general hospital for a potentially preventable reason is a key safety measure. Overall, for-profit rehabs have higher readmission rates than nonprofits do, but there are some with lower readmission rates and some with higher ones. You may not have a nearby choice: There are fewer than 400 rehab hospitals, and most general hospitals don’t have a rehab unit.
You can find a hospital’s readmission rates under Care Compare’s quality section. Rates lower than the national average are better.
Another measure of quality is how often patients are functional enough to go home after finishing rehab rather than to a nursing home, hospital, or health care institution. That measure is called “discharge to community” and is listed under Care Compare’s quality section. Rates higher than the national average are better.
Look for reviews of the hospital on Yelp and other sites. Ask if the patient will see the same therapist most days or a rotating cast of characters. Ask if the therapists have board certifications earned after intensive training to treat a patient’s particular condition.
Visit if possible, and don’t look only at the rooms in the hospital where therapy exercises take place. Injuries often occur in the 21 hours when a patient is not in therapy, but in his or her room or another part of the building. Infections, falls, bedsores, and medication errors are risks. If possible, observe whether nurses promptly respond to call lights, seem overloaded with too many patients, or are apathetically playing on their phones. Ask current patients and their family members if they are satisfied with the care.
What if I can’t handle three hours of therapy a day?
A nursing home that provides rehab might be appropriate for patients who don’t need the supervision of a doctor but aren’t ready to go home. The facilities generally provide round-the-clock nursing care. The amount of rehab varies based on the patient. There are more than 14,500 skilled nursing facilities in the United States, 12 times as many as hospitals offering rehab, so a nursing home may be the only option near you.
You can look for them through Medicare’s Care Compare website. (Read our previous guide to finding a good, well-staffed home to know how to assess the overall staffing.)
What if patients are too frail even for a nursing home?
They might need a long-term care hospital. Those specialize in patients who are in comas, on ventilators, and have acute medical conditions that require the presence of a physician. Patients stay at least four weeks, and some are there for months. Care Compare helps you search. There are fewer than 350 such hospitals.
I’m strong enough to go home. How do I receive therapy?
Many rehab hospitals offer outpatient therapy. You also can go to a clinic, or a therapist can come to you. You can hire a home health agency or find a therapist who takes your insurance and makes house calls. Your doctor or hospital may give you referrals. On Care Compare, home health agencies list whether they offer physical, occupational, or speech therapy. You can search for board-certified therapists on the American Physical Therapy Association’s website.
While undergoing rehab, patients sometimes move from hospital to nursing facility to home, often at the insistence of their insurers. Alice Bell, a senior specialist at the APTA, said patients should try to limit the number of transitions, for their own safety.
“Every time a patient moves from one setting to another,” she said, “they’re in a higher risk zone.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The post How To Find the Right Medical Rehab Services appeared first on kffhealthnews.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Centrist
This article from KFF Health News provides a comprehensive, fact-based guide to rehabilitation therapy options and how to navigate insurance, care settings, and provider quality. It avoids ideological framing and presents information in a neutral, practical tone aimed at helping consumers make informed medical decisions. While it touches on Medicare and private insurance policies, it does so without political commentary or value judgments, and no partisan viewpoints or advocacy positions are evident. The focus remains on patient care, safety, and informed choice, supporting a nonpartisan, service-oriented approach to health reporting.
Kaiser Health News
States Brace for Reversal of Obamacare Coverage Gains Under Trump’s Budget Bill
Shorter enrollment periods. More paperwork. Higher premiums. The sweeping tax and spending bill pushed by President Donald Trump includes provisions that would not only reshape people’s experience with the Affordable Care Act but, according to some policy analysts, also sharply undermine the gains in health insurance coverage associated with it.
The moves affect consumers and have particular resonance for the 19 states (plus Washington, D.C.) that run their own ACA exchanges.
Many of those states fear that the additional red tape — especially requirements that would end automatic reenrollment — would have an outsize impact on their policyholders. That’s because a greater percentage of people in those states use those rollovers versus shopping around each year, which is more commonly done by people in states that use the federal healthcare.gov marketplace.
“The federal marketplace always had a message of, ‘Come back in and shop,’ while the state-based markets, on average, have a message of, ‘Hey, here’s what you’re going to have next year, here’s what it will cost; if you like it, you don’t have to do anything,’” said Ellen Montz, who oversaw the federal ACA marketplace under the Biden administration as deputy administrator and director at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight. She is now a managing director with the Manatt Health consulting group.
Millions — perhaps up to half of enrollees in some states — may lose or drop coverage as a result of that and other changes in the legislation combined with a new rule from the Trump administration and the likely expiration at year’s end of enhanced premium subsidies put in place during the covid-19 pandemic. Without an extension of those subsidies, which have been an important driver of Obamacare enrollment in recent years, premiums are expected to rise 75% on average next year. That’s starting to happen already, based on some early state rate requests for next year, which are hitting double digits.
“We estimate a minimum 30% enrollment loss, and, in the worst-case scenario, a 50% loss,” said Devon Trolley, executive director of Pennie, the ACA marketplace in Pennsylvania, which had 496,661 enrollees this year, a record.
Drops of that magnitude nationally, coupled with the expected loss of Medicaid coverage for millions more people under the legislation Trump calls the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” could undo inroads made in the nation’s uninsured rate, which dropped by about half from the time most of the ACA’s provisions went into effect in 2014, when it hovered around 14% to 15% of the population, to just over 8%, according to the most recent data.
Premiums would rise along with the uninsured rate, because older or sicker policyholders are more likely to try to jump enrollment hurdles, while those who rarely use coverage — and are thus less expensive — would not.
After a dramatic all-night session, House Republicans passed the bill, meeting the president’s July 4 deadline. Trump is expected to sign the measure on Independence Day. It would increase the federal deficit by trillions of dollars and cut spending on a variety of programs, including Medicaid and nutrition assistance, to partly offset the cost of extending tax cuts put in place during the first Trump administration.
The administration and its supporters say the GOP-backed changes to the ACA are needed to combat fraud. Democrats and ACA supporters see this effort as the latest in a long history of Republican efforts to weaken or repeal Obamacare. Among other things, the legislation would end several changes put in place by the Biden administration that were credited with making it easier to sign up, such as lengthening the annual open enrollment period and launching a special program for very low-income people that essentially allows them to sign up year-round.
In addition, automatic reenrollment, used by more than 10 million people for 2025 ACA coverage, would end in the 2028 sign-up season. Instead, consumers would have to update their information, starting in August each year, before the close of open enrollment, which would end Dec. 15, a month earlier than currently.
That’s a key change to combat rising enrollment fraud, said Brian Blase, president of the conservative Paragon Health Institute, because it gets at what he calls the Biden era’s “lax verification requirements.”
He blames automatic reenrollment, coupled with the availability of zero-premium plans for people with lower incomes that qualify them for large subsidies, for a sharp uptick in complaints from insurers, consumers, and brokers about fraudulent enrollments in 2023 and 2024. Those complaints centered on consumers’ being enrolled in an ACA plan, or switched from one to another, without authorization, often by commission-seeking brokers.
In testimony to Congress on June 25, Blase wrote that “this simple step will close a massive loophole and significantly reduce improper enrollment and spending.”
States that run their own marketplaces, however, saw few, if any, such problems, which were confined mainly to the 31 states using the federal healthcare.gov.
The state-run marketplaces credit their additional security measures and tighter control over broker access than healthcare.gov for the relative lack of problems.
“If you look at California and the other states that have expanded their Medicaid programs, you don’t see that kind of fraud problem,” said Jessica Altman, executive director of Covered California, the state’s Obamacare marketplace. “I don’t have a single case of a consumer calling Covered California saying, ‘I was enrolled without consent.’”
Such rollovers are common with other forms of health insurance, such as job-based coverage.
“By requiring everyone to come back in and provide additional information, and the fact that they can’t get a tax credit until they take this step, it is essentially making marketplace coverage the most difficult coverage to enroll in,” said Trolley at Pennie, 65% of whose policyholders were automatically reenrolled this year, according to KFF data. KFF is a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.
Federal data shows about 22% of federal sign-ups in 2024 were automatic-reenrollments, versus 58% in state-based plans. Besides Pennsylvania, the states that saw such sign-ups for more than 60% of enrollees include California, New York, Georgia, New Jersey, and Virginia, according to KFF.
States do check income and other eligibility information for all enrollees — including those being automatically renewed, those signing up for the first time, and those enrolling outside the normal open enrollment period because they’ve experienced a loss of coverage or other life event or meet the rules for the low-income enrollment period.
“We have access to many data sources on the back end that we ping, to make sure nothing has changed. Most people sail through and are able to stay covered without taking any proactive step,” Altman said.
If flagged for mismatched data, applicants are asked for additional information. Under current law, “we have 90 days for them to have a tax credit while they submit paperwork,” Altman said.
That would change under the tax and spending plan before Congress, ending presumptive eligibility while a person submits the information.
A white paper written for Capital Policy Analytics, a Washington-based consultancy that specializes in economic analysis, concluded there appears to be little upside to the changes.
While “tighter verification can curb improper enrollments,” the additional paperwork, along with the expiration of higher premiums from the enhanced tax subsidies, “would push four to six million eligible people out of Marketplace plans, trading limited fraud savings for a surge in uninsurance,” wrote free market economists Ike Brannon and Anthony LoSasso.
“Insurers would be left with a smaller, sicker risk pool and heightened pricing uncertainty, making further premium increases and selective market exits [by insurers] likely,” they wrote.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
USE OUR CONTENT
This story can be republished for free (details).
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.
This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The post States Brace for Reversal of Obamacare Coverage Gains Under Trump’s Budget Bill appeared first on kffhealthnews.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
This content presents a critique of Republican-led changes to the Affordable Care Act, emphasizing potential negative impacts such as increased premiums, reduced enrollment, and the erosion of coverage gains made under the ACA. It highlights the perspective of policy analysts and state officials who express concern over these measures, while also presenting conservative viewpoints, particularly those focusing on fraud reduction. Overall, the tone and framing lean toward protecting the ACA and its expansions, which traditionally aligns with Center-Left media analysis.
Kaiser Health News
Dual Threats From Trump and GOP Imperil Nursing Homes and Their Foreign-Born Workers
In a top-rated nursing home in Alexandria, Virginia, the Rev. Donald Goodness is cared for by nurses and aides from various parts of Africa. One of them, Jackline Conteh, a naturalized citizen and nurse assistant from Sierra Leone, bathes and helps dress him most days and vigilantly intercepts any meal headed his way that contains gluten, as Goodness has celiac disease.
“We are full of people who come from other countries,” Goodness, 92, said about Goodwin House Alexandria’s staff. Without them, the retired Episcopal priest said, “I would be, and my building would be, desolate.”
The long-term health care industry is facing a double whammy from President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants and the GOP’s proposals to reduce Medicaid spending. The industry is highly dependent on foreign workers: More than 800,000 immigrants and naturalized citizens comprise 28% of direct care employees at home care agencies, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and other long-term care companies.
But in January, the Trump administration rescinded former President Joe Biden’s 2021 policy that protected health care facilities from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. The administration’s broad immigration crackdown threatens to drastically reduce the number of current and future workers for the industry. “People may be here on a green card, and they are afraid ICE is going to show up,” said Katie Smith Sloan, president of LeadingAge, an association of nonprofits that care for older adults.
Existing staffing shortages and quality-of-care problems would be compounded by other policies pushed by Trump and the Republican-led Congress, according to nursing home officials, resident advocates, and academic experts. Federal spending cuts under negotiation may strip nursing homes of some of their largest revenue sources by limiting ways states leverage Medicaid money and making it harder for new nursing home residents to retroactively qualify for Medicaid. Care for 6 in 10 residents is paid for by Medicaid, the state-federal health program for poor or disabled Americans.
“We are facing the collision of two policies here that could further erode staffing in nursing homes and present health outcome challenges,” said Eric Roberts, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
The industry hasn’t recovered from covid-19, which killed more than 200,000 long-term care facility residents and workers and led to massive staff attrition and turnover. Nursing homes have struggled to replace licensed nurses, who can find better-paying jobs at hospitals and doctors’ offices, as well as nursing assistants, who can earn more working at big-box stores or fast-food joints. Quality issues that preceded the pandemic have expanded: The percentage of nursing homes that federal health inspectors cited for putting residents in jeopardy of immediate harm or death has risen alarmingly from 17% in 2015 to 28% in 2024.
In addition to seeking to reduce Medicaid spending, congressional Republicans have proposed shelving the biggest nursing home reform in decades: a Biden-era rule mandating minimum staffing levels that would require most of the nation’s nearly 15,000 nursing homes to hire more workers.
The long-term care industry expects demand for direct care workers to burgeon with an influx of aging baby boomers needing professional care. The Census Bureau has projected the number of people 65 and older would grow from 63 million this year to 82 million in 2050.
In an email, Vianca Rodriguez Feliciano, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the agency “is committed to supporting a strong, stable long-term care workforce” and “continues to work with states and providers to ensure quality care for older adults and individuals with disabilities.” In a separate email, Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said foreigners wanting to work as caregivers “need to do that by coming here the legal way” but did not address the effect on the long-term care workforce of deportations of classes of authorized immigrants.
Goodwin Living, a faith-based nonprofit, runs three retirement communities in northern Virginia for people who live independently, need a little assistance each day, have memory issues, or require the availability of around-the-clock nurses. It also operates a retirement community in Washington, D.C. Medicare rates Goodwin House Alexandria as one of the best-staffed nursing homes in the country. Forty percent of the organization’s 1,450 employees are foreign-born and are either seeking citizenship or are already naturalized, according to Lindsay Hutter, a Goodwin spokesperson.
“As an employer, we see they stay on with us, they have longer tenure, they are more committed to the organization,” said Rob Liebreich, Goodwin’s president and CEO.
Jackline Conteh spent much of her youth shuttling between Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ghana to avoid wars and tribal conflicts. Her mother was killed by a stray bullet in her home country of Liberia, Conteh said. “She was sitting outside,” Conteh, 56, recalled in an interview.
Conteh was working as a nurse in a hospital in Sierra Leone in 2009 when she learned of a lottery for visas to come to the United States. She won, though she couldn’t afford to bring her husband and two children along at the time. After she got a nursing assistant certification, Goodwin hired her in 2012.
Conteh said taking care of elders is embedded in the culture of African families. When she was 9, she helped feed and dress her grandmother, a job that rotated among her and her sisters. She washed her father when he was dying of prostate cancer. Her husband joined her in the United States in 2017; she cares for him because he has heart failure.
“Nearly every one of us from Africa, we know how to care for older adults,” she said.
Her daughter is now in the United States, while her son is still in Africa. Conteh said she sends money to him, her mother-in-law, and one of her sisters.
In the nursing home where Goodness and 89 other residents live, Conteh helps with daily tasks like dressing and eating, checks residents’ skin for signs of swelling or sores, and tries to help them avoid falling or getting disoriented. Of 102 employees in the building, broken up into eight residential wings called “small houses” and a wing for memory care, at least 72 were born abroad, Hutter said.
Donald Goodness grew up in Rochester, New York, and spent 25 years as rector of The Church of the Ascension in New York City, retiring in 1997. He and his late wife moved to Alexandria to be closer to their daughter, and in 2011 they moved into independent living at the Goodwin House. In 2023 he moved into one of the skilled nursing small houses, where Conteh started caring for him.
“I have a bad leg and I can’t stand on it very much, or I’d fall over,” he said. “She’s in there at 7:30 in the morning, and she helps me bathe.” Goodness said Conteh is exacting about cleanliness and will tell the housekeepers if his room is not kept properly.
Conteh said Goodness was withdrawn when he first arrived. “He don’t want to come out, he want to eat in his room,” she said. “He don’t want to be with the other people in the dining room, so I start making friends with him.”
She showed him a photo of Sierra Leone on her phone and told him of the weather there. He told her about his work at the church and how his wife did laundry for the choir. The breakthrough, she said, came one day when he agreed to lunch with her in the dining room. Long out of his shell, Goodness now sits on the community’s resident council and enjoys distributing the mail to other residents on his floor.
“The people that work in my building become so important to us,” Goodness said.
While Trump’s 2024 election campaign focused on foreigners here without authorization, his administration has broadened to target those legally here, including refugees who fled countries beset by wars or natural disasters. This month, the Department of Homeland Security revoked the work permits for migrants and refugees from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who arrived under a Biden-era program.
“I’ve just spent my morning firing good, honest people because the federal government told us that we had to,” Rachel Blumberg, president of the Toby & Leon Cooperman Sinai Residences of Boca Raton, a Florida retirement community, said in a video posted on LinkedIn. “I am so sick of people saying that we are deporting people because they are criminals. Let me tell you, they are not all criminals.”
At Goodwin House, Conteh is fearful for her fellow immigrants. Foreign workers at Goodwin rarely talk about their backgrounds. “They’re scared,” she said. “Nobody trusts anybody.” Her neighbors in her apartment complex fled the U.S. in December and returned to Sierra Leone after Trump won the election, leaving their children with relatives.
“If all these people leave the United States, they go back to Africa or to their various countries, what will become of our residents?” Conteh asked. “What will become of our old people that we’re taking care of?”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The post Dual Threats From Trump and GOP Imperil Nursing Homes and Their Foreign-Born Workers appeared first on kffhealthnews.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
This content primarily highlights concerns about the impact of restrictive immigration policies and Medicaid spending cuts proposed by the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers on the long-term care industry. It emphasizes the importance of immigrant workers in healthcare, the challenges that staffing shortages pose to patient care, and the potential negative effects of GOP policy proposals. The tone is critical of these policies while sympathetic toward immigrant workers and advocates for maintaining or increasing government support for healthcare funding. The framing aligns with a center-left perspective, focusing on social welfare, immigrant rights, and concern about the consequences of conservative economic and immigration policies without descending into partisan rhetoric.
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