Former Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson, a Democrat but the CEO of a nursing home industry group, wrote Trump after the 2016 election seeking a “collaborative approach” to regulation, much like the one the Federal Aviation Administration has had with the aircraft industry.
Team Trump acquiesced, rolling back fines and proposing to weaken rules for infection prevention employees. That collaborative approach has failed, much as it did with the FAA , the agency that enabled failures in the design of the Boeing 737 Max.
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Shoddy federal oversight of planes helped kill 346 people. The death toll from the pandemic, where health officials Seema Verma and Alex Azar helped turn our nation’s nursing homes into Trump death traps, is more than 46,000.
Under Obama, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services created a new position for nursing homes to try to help prevent infections from spreading. The employees, infection preventionists, are supposed to make sure nursing home staff properly clean their hands, disinfect surfaces and other measures to prevent illnesses in residents and staff.
The requirement was part of a 2016 rule that was the first major update to requirements for long-term care providers since 1991. The rule also included protections against abuse, neglect and exploitation of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.
Under Trump, fines for nursing homes that injured or endangered residents dropped to an average of $28,405 compared to $41,260 during the last year of Obama’s administration. In 2017, CMS put an 18-month moratorium on fines and other penalties for some of the tougher regulations, saying it would use the time to “educate surveyors and the providers.”
Now, Verma and Azar want to weaken the infection preventionist position, changing the position from at least part-time to spending “sufficient time” at the facility. Nursing home inspectors started focusing exclusively on infection control after the pandemic started.
Some of the nursing home executives who asked federal regulators to weaken the standards for infection preventionists have had coronavirus outbreaks in their facilities.
Deb Fournier, the chief operations officer for Maine Veterans’ Homes, said in September that she supported the proposed Trump changes in employees charged with preventing infections.
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A profound, historical difference separates the protests across America the past six days from past eruptions of anger over police violence against black men and women. It’s a difference that isn’t showing up news reports, televised or print even though it’s quite apparent.
The differences are where these demonstrations are taking place and who is protesting,
In Los Angeles, the demonstrators were not in the poor and historically black neighborhood known as Watts, but in Beverly Hills and the city’s prosperous West Side. Many of those demonstrating were white. In some places a majority were white.
The coronavirus is tearing into a new demographic as states relax social distancing guidelines.
Younger Americans have gone back to work in the service industry and congregating in public, and their activity seems to be bearing out ominous predictions from public health experts, reported The Daily Beast.
“Watch what’s happening before and after the peak,” said epidemiologist Dr. Judith Malmgren, of the University of Washington’s school of public health. “The disease didn’t change, but the people who were infected changed.”
In another no-holds-barred ad from the Lincoln Project -- headed up by Republicans Rick Wilson, George Conway and Steve Schmidt -- Donald Trump is linked to the Confederacy and, by extension, treason against the United States.
The ad notes the prevalence of the Confederate flag at Trump rallies -- some even bearing his name -- and notes, "The men who followed this flag 150 years ago knew what it meant: Treason against their country. Death of the United States,” in the voiceover.
With clips showing the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, the ad goes on to ask, "What does it say that they’re all in for Trump?"
