As part of his undeclared candidacy to be California’s next governor, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra paid a pandering visit in April to the Los Angeles headquarters of an SEIU...
Lawsuit threat for government-run facilities sails again
By
Brendan Williams
Jun 15, 2023
In 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center, denied Medicaid providers the right to sue over the adequacy of Medicaid payment rates. It was a 5-4 decision...
CMS should bring its oversight hammer down . . . on states
By
Brendan Williams
Oct 17, 2022
CMS has an absolute hammer when it comes to accepting, or rejecting, state Medicaid rates that it finds fail to substantially comply with federal law,
Playing politics with nursing home care
By
Brendan Williams
Apr 23, 2024
Tragicomically, CMS asserts “this final rule will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities[.]”
Facts don’t support attacking nursing home care
By
Brendan Williams
Jul 26, 2023
We can probably assume no House Select Subcommittee will stage a showy hearing to examine the recent finding that the excess mortality rate was better during the COVID-19 pandemic for those with dementia...
Impossible expectations are undermining nursing home care
By
Brendan Williams
Feb 05, 2024
Maine has the nation’s oldest population, and yet almost 40% of its nursing homes have closed within the past few decades. As the Bangor Daily News has reported, that’s forced residents of some...
CMS should be careful in what it asks for
By
Brendan Williams
Dec 23, 2022
Those in the nursing home sector are worried a potential staffing mandate imposed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services could be the ruination of a reeling sector. However, there is an argument...
Skilled nursing care’s cloudy Medicare future
By
Brendan Williams
Aug 18, 2023
A net gain of $1.4 billion for a sector comprised of over 15,000 nursing homes somewhat pales in comparison to a looming CMS staffing mandate estimated to cost nursing homes $11.3 billion a year.
Paying the price of political ransomware
By
Brendan Williams
Mar 20, 2024
Perspective is too often lacking when it comes to our healthcare system. Policymakers will, for example, generalize from every alleged transgression by a nursing home provider and paint the entire...
President Biden’s staffing mandate would crush nonprofit nursing homes too
By
Brendan Williams
Jan 08, 2024
Although President Biden, once the darling of the credit card industry and now reborn as an economic populist, has never said anything positive about nursing homes, he has inferred that nonprofit...