Nursing Homes and Pay-to-Play Politics
Kenneth P. Vogel and Christina Jewett at NYT:The nursing home industry was on a roll last summer.
It had just won a 10-year moratorium on a rule initiated during President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration to require increased staffing levels in an effort to reduce neglect among residents, which had led to injuries and deadly infections.
Nonetheless, some in the industry, warning that the rule would have substantially increased costs, wanted to make it go away permanently.
So nursing home executives turned to a tool that has proved successful in getting President Trump’s attention: money.
Starting in early August, the industry began making donations that over the course of weeks would eventually total nearly $4.8 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC devoted to Mr. Trump and run by his allies.
Later that same month, a handful of nursing home executives who had given the biggest donations joined industry lobbyists at Mr. Trump’s golf club in suburban Washington to plead their case, according to campaign finance filings and people familiar with the meeting.
Over light lunch fare, the contingent “urged the president to formally repeal the harmful minimum staffing mandate, which would have surely forced providers throughout the country to close their doors to new residents — or possibly close their doors altogether,” Bill Weisberg, the founder and chief executive of Saber Healthcare Group, recounted in a text message to The New York Times.
Less than one month after the lunch meeting, Trump administration lawyers quietly stopped defending the pending staffing rule in court against challenges from the industry.
Complete victory came a couple of months after that, when the White House approved a full revocation. The Department of Health and Human Services announced the repeal in a statement that echoed industry talking points, which have emphasized the industry’s difficulty in hiring enough staff, especially in rural areas
