A new staffing rule is little more than doing the bidding of the SEIU and National Nurses United.
As President Joe Biden nears the end of his term, his administration is in a hurry to impose new regulations and shower allies with benefits. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently finalized a rule that mandates staffing increases at nursing homes that will cost taxpayers and families billions of dollars a year. The regulation is a transparent payoff to politically connected unions with little policy justification.
The new CMS rule requires nursing homes to have a registered nurse on site 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and requires nursing homes to hire tens of thousands of other nurses to increase the amount of time they spend with residents. The government estimates that about 80 percent of the country’s nearly 15,000 nursing homes would have to add staff to comply.
The administration expects the new rule will cost $43 billion over the next decade. Some independent estimates show the cost at closer to $70 billion over a similar time frame. For perspective, the much-debated and scrutinized CHIPS and Science Act appropriated about $50 billion for semiconductor subsidies, along with another $25 billion or so in tax credits.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the National Review Online (paywall)
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Judge Glock is the director of research and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor at City Journal.
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