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 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,
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...
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[.]”
Healthcare to remain dominant issue in 2019
By
Brendan Williams
Dec 14, 2018
There is a way Democrats could capitalize upon the enthusiasm of many in their base for “Medicare for All.” They could join together with Republicans and make Medicare responsible for what so many...
Useless PPE befitting federal nursing home neglect
By
Brendan Williams
Jul 29, 2020
According to Paraprofessional Health Institute data, there were 581,000 nursing assistants working in nursing homes in 2018. Their median wage was just $13.38 an hour. Ninety-two percent were women,...
Must we let COVID waltz in the front door?
By
Brendan Williams
Jan 14, 2022
My son is a freshman at a public university in the state of Washington that made the abrupt decision, late afternoon on the last day one could withdraw and receive a tuition refund, to go to online instruction...
Sen. Grassley fails to recognize the real neglect
By
Brendan Williams
Apr 19, 2019
Sen. Chuck Grassley has used his position to attack long-term care in headline-grabbing ways.
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...
Time for government – not nursing homes – to shoulder collective COVID-19 blame
By
Brendan Williams
Jun 07, 2021
In his 1964 State of the Union Address, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared that “[e]very American community will benefit from the construction or modernization of schools and libraries and hospitals...