Healthcare gets dumped on again by feds

With the highly anticipated U.S. Supreme Court ruling on vaccine mandates last month, administrators at our hospital and nursing home/assisted living facilities in Imperial and Wauneta had some anxious moments.
    They were all disappointed with the 5-4 decision that left the mandates in place, thus requiring all employees in their facilities to get both vaccine shots or file an exemption request. It means more work for the administration, which now must track all of the employees, tally their vaccination status and deal with the exemption requests, too.
    That’s heaped on top of all the other extra responsibilities dumped on them thanks to COVID-19 and all the politics that came with it.
    I wrote last year I hoped it wouldn’t be much longer when I no longer had to type the word “COVID-19.” So much for wishes.
    But, back to the Supreme Court vote.
    The mandate originated from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Facilities serving patients or residents on those programs fall under their rules. While lower courts ruled against the mandates, putting a temporary halt on them in November, they were taken to the Supreme Court, where justices ruled in favor of the mandate.
    There is no way our senior care facilities and hospital can operate without the Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements they receive. At Chase County Community Hospital alone, 64% of its net revenue comes from CMS payments. That amounts to more than $8 million in annual revenue.
    Some may ask, “What’s the big deal? They have an exemption option.” I would ask in response, “What happened to HIPPA?” I thought such health information was private.
    The government is also requiring healthcare workers/employees to put a vaccine in their bodies that has not gone through the exhaustive testing other vaccines required in schools, as an example, have undergone. That makes it different.
    Healthcare workers and employees were on the front lines early in 2020 long before vaccines were available. They certainly were okay then to work, weren’t they?
    In December 2020, newly-election President Joe Biden said he’d never mandate the vaccine. So much for promises.