At a time when Georgia’s senior population is booming and in growing need of nursing homes, the Biden Administration is proposing a misguided mandate that will hurt seniors’ access to care, not help it. The Biden Administration has finalized a misguided Minimum Staffing Rule that will force nearly 80 percent of nursing homes to increase costs for patients or close their doors to new patients. As a result, more than 9,600 vulnerable seniors in Georgia could be out of a home when facilities are forced to turn away admission or close their doors for good. I took to the Savannah Morning News to share my thoughts on the crisis, and you can read them here.

Carter: The Biden Administration's fix to the nursing home workforce crisis is misguided

By: Rep. Buddy Carter

My career as neighborhood pharmacist for many years taught me the importance of caring for vulnerable groups and patients, and those lessons aren’t lost on me now as a congressman.

That is why I strongly oppose the Biden administration’s recently proposed minimum staffing mandate for nursing homes. At a time when Georgia’s senior population is booming and in growing need of these services, the Biden administration has forced through an unfunded mandate that will decrease nursing home access.

Long-term care facilities are facing a historic staffing shortage, especially in rural and underserved communities. There are roughly 235,900 fewer healthcare staff working in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities compared to March of 2020. While other sectors of the economy have been able to bounce back since the pandemic, nursing homes have lost caregivers. At their current pace, nursing homes aren’t expected to return to pre-pandemic staffing levels until late 2026.

Despite this huge shortage, the Biden administration has recently proposed a federal staffing requirement for nursing homes across the country. Without any substantial resources and programs to help nursing homes attract new workers, this rule dictates the impossible: Hiring more employees from a skilled workforce that doesn’t exist.

In Georgia, if this rule is finalized, we wouldn’t be able to meet the requirement without putting our facilities in financial distress. One analysis estimates that Georgia nursing homes would need an additional 3,652 full-time employees, costing approximately $187 million per year. More than three-quarters of our nursing homes across the Peach State do not meet at least one of the three proposed staffing requirements.

If Georgia nursing homes can’t meet the mandate, more than 9,600 vulnerable residents could be out of a home when facilities are forced to turn away new admissions or close their doors for good. And if they stay open but fall short of the staffing mandate, they will be fined, stretching paper-thin budgets even thinner. Patients who do get a bed will face the higher prices this mandate will cause.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) conducted its own study that concluded a one-size-fits-all approach does not guarantee quality care. In other words, the only known outcome of this new policy is that it will exacerbate the current challenges and result in facilities across the country denying care to seniors in need of nursing home level of care.

As a conservative, I’m leery of government mandates because they take away our freedoms, distort our markets, and often bring unintended consequences; this bad idea will do all three. I urge the Biden administration to reconsider this proposed rule and instead focus on thoughtful policies that increase access to care for our most vulnerable by expanding the nursing workforce pipeline to meet Georgia’s growing needs for decades to come.

I’ll do my part in Congress to advocate for those meaningful solutions, and I call on U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to join me in demanding the Biden administration rescind this harmful regulation.

Read Rep. Carter's full op-ed here.