The Biden administration will withhold Medicare and Medicaid funds from nursing homes that do not require all staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
“If you work in a nursing home and serve people on Medicare and Medicaid, you will also be required to get vaccinated,” President Joe Biden said Wednesday during a speech on his administration’s COVID-19 response. “Vaccination rates among nursing home staff significantly trail the rest of the country. … If you visit, live, or work in a nursing home, you should not be at a high risk [of] contracting COVID from unvaccinated employees.”
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It is the first time Biden has threatened to cut off federal funds to incentivize people to get vaccinated.
About 1.3 million people work in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities nationwide. According to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 60% of staff in nursing homes have had a COVID-19 vaccine. Over 82% of residents are also vaccinated.
Since the surge of the delta variant, coronavirus infections have been on the rise in nursing homes. In Texas, for example, the number of nursing homes with an active COVID-19 case rose from 56 to 489 from mid-July to mid-August.
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Some long-term care companies have already imposed vaccine mandates on staff. In July, the Good Samaritan Society, which operates nursing homes in 24 states, required staff to be vaccinated after breakthrough cases of COVID-19 occurred in facilities where unvaccinated staff members tested positive for the coronavirus.
