On March 6, 2024, the House Ways and Means Committee passed a bill, H.R. 7513, “Protecting America’s Seniors’ Access to Care Act,” that prohibits the Secretary of Health and Human Services from promulgating any nursing home staffing standards, now or in the future. Specifically, it prohibits the finalizing, implementing, enforcing, or otherwise giving effect to the Biden Administration’s proposed rule to establish staffing requirements. It also prohibits “any substantially similar rule.” The vote was largely partisan. All Republicans on the Committee supported the bill; all Democrats but one opposed it. Republican Representatives may try, on the House floor, to add the bill to different legislative vehicles, including the fiscal year 2025 funding bill.
Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D, TX) “slammed the legislation” and said the bill “should be known as ‘The Abandon Nursing Home Residents Act.’” He described the proposed rule as “modest, long-overdue minimum safe staffing standards.” He cited his comment letter on the proposed rule, joined by more than 100 Members of Congress, to strengthen the proposed rule’s staffing requirements and to mandate 4.2 hours of nursing care for each resident each day. Doggett cited opposition to H.R. 7513 by the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care, AARP, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, SEIU, AFL-CIO, and AFSCME.
March 7, 2024 – T. Edelman