@hightor,
Quote:He also deserved criticism for slashing emergency response funds (and, typically, trying to shift the blame to someone else).
Look at the real nice policy proposal these criminals are contemplating in the midst of all this:
Trump Administration Is Relaxing Oversight of Nursing Homes
A proposal would loosen federal rules meant to control infections, just as the coronavirus rips through nursing homes.
By Jesse Drucker and Jessica Silver-Greenberg
March 14, 2020
The Trump administration has been working to relax regulations governing America’s nursing homes, including rules meant to curb deadly infections among elderly residents.
The main federal regulator overseeing nursing homes proposed the rule changes last summer, before the coronavirus pandemic highlighted the vulnerability of nursing homes to fast-spreading diseases. The push followed a spate of lobbying and campaign contributions by people in the nursing-home industry, according to public records and interviews.
The coronavirus has killed 13 residents at a nursing home in Washington State; dozens more residents and employees there have fallen ill. Seeking to prevent further contagion, some states, including New York, have banned most nonmedical personnel from setting foot inside nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, which nationally have about 2.5 million residents.
Last July, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or C.M.S., set in motion a plan to weaken rules imposed by the Obama administration that required every nursing home to employ at least one specialist in preventing infections. The proposed rules — which the agency is completing and has the power to enact — eliminate the requirement to have even a part-time infection specialist on staff. Instead, the Trump administration would require that anti-infection specialists spend “sufficient time at the facility.”
Critics say the proposed requirement is so vague that it would be essentially meaningless — and dangerous.
“It adds up to less time, less infection control,” said Anthony Chicotel, a staff lawyer for California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform. He said the proposed change was “alarming.”
Attorneys general in 17 states have called the proposed rules a threat to “the mental and physical security of some of the most vulnerable residents of our states.”
The White House referred questions to the Medicare and Medicaid agency. In an interview on Saturday, the agency’s administrator, Seema Verma, said the proposed rule changes were not about easing up on nursing homes but “about not micromanaging the process.” The proposed changes to the infection-prevention rules, she said, could actually result in a “higher level of staffing.”
“We have to make sure that our regulations are not so burdensome that they hurt the industry,” she said.
Ms. Verma emphasized that the rules were still in the proposal stage and not yet complete. “We have to make sure that we get it right for the sake of patients,” she said.
Infection-prevention specialists are supposed to ensure that employees at nursing homes properly wash their hands and follow other safety protocols. They are widely considered the front line for stopping infections, among the leading causes of deaths in nursing homes. ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/business/trump-administration-nursing-homes.html
