What Biden gets wrong about nursing homes: President is trying to lump us all together
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To break through to the American public, the Biden administration is using forceful and unapologetic language on long-term care. They want constituents and voters to know that they are working to fix the broken federal system.
We get it. The public needs someone to condemn, someone to push back against. In the narrative the administration is selling, nursing homes have been uniformly cast in the role of villain.
It’s an emotionally compelling tactic to address a complex situation. The trouble is, it’s not accurate.
Nonprofit and mission-driven nursing homes, including members of the association I lead, are not the grifters and blame-shifters that the public is being led to believe they are. We share the administration’s goal of ensuring America’s older adults and families can receive high quality nursing home care – it’s why nonprofit providers go to work every day.
“Think of it this way,” Biden wrote in a Friday USA TODAY opinion piece, “we are working to make sure no nursing home can sacrifice the safety of its residents just to add some dollars to its bottom line.”
So are we − everyday on the front lines of care.
President Biden: Nursing homes are putting residents at risk. We're ending the abuse today.
Biden knows not all nursing homes are the same
The president goes on to make it clear that he understands that not all nursing homes are the same, not all bad (which is a shift from past comments, and one we celebrate): “It’s telling that nonprofit nursing homes are three times as likely as for-profit facilities to already satisfy the minimum staffing standard we’re proposing today. Some corporate nursing home owners are taking taxpayer dollars while cutting corners on staffing so they can make big payouts to executives and shareholders.”
Yes, it is telling. Which is why the administration must move that message to the forefront of its public statements − and its policies.
Nursing homes aren’t all the same. Read far enough into an op-ed or sift through documents such as the hundreds of pages of a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services proposed rule on staffing mandates in nursing homes, it's clear that the administration knows this.
Still, the president made an unqualified and unfair slam – "As a country, we’re delivering a clear message to the nursing home industry: no more padding profits on the backs of residents and nurses."
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Biden says he’s supporting “the folks who are doing God’s work.” That’s us. Our members are nursing homes rooted in faith traditions that have long played a special and critical role in communities nationwide. We are mission-minded, values-driven organizations that have stood the test of time, sometimes for more than 100 years as key pillars of our cities and towns.
Please don’t end that powerful tradition by eroding the trusted role we play in the lives of the people we serve.
Biden must work with nonprofit nursing homes, not against us
Lift us up. Support us. Work with us. We cannot bear the burden of the just-released proposed staffing mandates alone. The costs, estimated to reach into the billions, will be crushing.
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Help us fill our pipeline of caregiving professionals by urging Congress to reform immigration pathways. Raise reimbursement rates and inspire states to do the same, so we can afford the care we exist to deliver.
It’s time for the administration to recognize it must be part of the solution. Only then can we protect and preserve access to high quality care.
Katie Smith Sloan is president and CEO of LeadingAge, the association of nonprofit providers of aging services, including nursing homes.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden paints all nursing homes as villains. It's not accurate or fair
