Republicans and Democrats are divided on how to investigate the rampant and deadly spread of the coronavirus in many of the nation’s nursing homes.
Both parties agree Congress should investigate coronavirus deaths at nursing homes and long-term care facilities. In some states, the facilities account for more than half of all the state’s coronavirus deaths. Nationwide, nursing home and long-term care facilities were associated with 40% of all coronavirus deaths.
Republicans say the fault lies with the states, and specifically the Democratic governors of New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, and California who all implemented policies that enabled or required coronavirus-infected patients to be admitted to nursing homes, where the elderly and sick population was particularly vulnerable to the virus.
But Democrats aren’t blaming governors. They point the finger at the Trump administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which they say exerted “lax oversight” and failed to provide enough personal protective equipment and testing to the facilities.
A House panel specially created to oversee the nation’s coronavirus response pledged to get answers, but the two parties are taking separate paths.
Rep. Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, serves as the top GOP member on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, which was created by Democrats.
Scalise sent letters to the governors of New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and California seeking information about their decisions to permit coronavirus-infected patients into nursing homes.
“The decision of several governors to ignore federal protocols and instead mandate COVID positive patients be forced back to their nursing homes ended up being a death sentence for tens of thousands of our nation’s most vulnerable citizens,” Scalise wrote. “We owe it to those who died and their grieving families to get to the bottom of why these deadly decisions were made by these governors, ensure we stop this from still taking place, and prevent tragedies like these from happening again as we continue to battle this deadly virus.”
Democrats, who control the panel’s majority, are not seeking information from the governors. Panel Chairman James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, is investigating the actions of the CMS, which oversees nursing homes, as well as five for-profit nursing home companies that run most of the country’s nursing home facilities.
“CMS has issued guidance for nursing homes, but this guidance has often been unclear, and CMS failed to take adequate steps to ensure that nursing homes comply with its recommendations,” Clyburn said. “Deregulation and lax enforcement of infection control violations by CMS — both before and during the pandemic — may have contributed to the spread of the virus.”
Republicans pointed out the CMS issued guidance to nursing homes on March 13 that said nursing homes should “admit any individual that they would normally admit to their facility, including individuals from hospitals where a case of COVID-19 was/is present, only if the nursing home can follow Centers for Disease Control (CDC) quarantining guidance.”
Yet, after the guidance was issued, the five governors issued orders requiring nursing homes to accept patients with the coronavirus.
In New York, for example, the New York Department of Health issued a directive on March 25 that said no nursing home resident “shall be denied readmission or admission … solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19,” and it prohibited requiring a hospitalized resident from being tested for the coronavirus “prior to admission or readmission.”
The directive is now deleted from the Department of Health website. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has come under intense criticism for his handling of nursing home outbreaks, which have resulted in 6,360 nursing home deaths. New York’s nursing home deaths from the coronavirus are among the highest in the United States and make up a quarter of the state’s overall cases and 4% of all state nursing home residents.
Scalise and the four Republicans on the coronavirus panel seek all government-issued guidance and communications between state officials regarding the nursing home coronavirus policies in the five states, as well as staff briefings. They are also seeking data on nursing home deaths and cases of coronavirus patients who were returned to nursing homes.
So far, the GOP requests have been ignored by the Democratic governors.
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi called the GOP lawmakers “craven political hacks” who were “apparently seeking some sort of election-year boost and to misdirect attention away from the oversight committee’s investigation into the federal pandemic response,” the New York Post reported.
And there is little recourse. Republicans are in the minority and do not have subpoena power, and Clyburn has little interest in querying Democratic governors.
“Members such as yourself, acting on your own, do not act on behalf of the subcommittee,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy wrote to Scalise on Thursday, rejecting his request for nursing home data.
Murphy said Scalise’s request contained “gross mischaracterizations as well as broad requests for privileged material that would necessarily require essential staff to divert their attention away from addressing the present public health emergency.”
New Jersey nursing homes have experienced more than 6,400 deaths related to the coronavirus, which is half of all deaths in the state related to the virus and nearly 10% of all New Jersey nursing home residents.
Clyburn is moving ahead with his investigation of the CMS and the nursing home companies, which face the committee majority’s subpoena authority. Clyburn has ordered the companies to provide documents and information “related to coronavirus cases and deaths, testing, personal protective equipment, staffing levels and pay, legal violations, and efforts to prevent further infections.” Clyburn has also requested “more transparency” about the use of federal aid to battle the coronavirus at nursing homes.
