Federal Mandate Shakes Up Vaccine Debate For Health Workers, Companies
President Joe Biden's announcement that all health care workers are required to get vaccinated may have a big impact on rural hospitals in particular. While employers also wrap their arms around the implications of new federal requirements, one group not impacted by them is retired seniors.
Health care associations applaud the new policy and underscore the importance of getting vaccinated, but they're worried it could exacerbate workforce shortages amid a surge of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. This unintended consequence could hit rural hospitals especially hard, said Alan Morgan, chief executive officer of the National Rural Health Association. "Right off the back, vaccines are safe and effective and it’s imperative that all rural health care workforce providers and staff need to be vaccinated,” he said. “But we also know that there are higher rates of hospital workers that are unvaccinated and have no intention of getting vaccinated in the rural context … this is a significant concern.” (Rodriguez, 9/10)
A lawsuit against Henry Ford Health System and its executives over the hospital system's COVID-19 vaccine mandate has been withdrawn. Court records show the 51 employees pulled the lawsuit Friday, only four days after filing in U.S. District Court in Detroit, after President Joe Biden signed an executive order Thursday to force hospitals that receive Medicare or Medicaid payments to mandate the vaccine. Biden said Thursday he'd order all executive branch employees, federal contractors and millions of healthcare workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, and that his administration would issue rules requiring large private employers to mandate shots or testing. (9/10)
President Joe Biden’s new Covid-19 plan will mandate vaccines for 100 million working Americans, but one group was conspicuously absent from this week’s announcement: senior citizens. They’re also the most likely to be hospitalized or die from the virus -- by a wide margin. Retired seniors have been far more accepting of vaccines than their working-age counterparts. Their full vaccination rate is about 82%, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Because they’re susceptible to severe illness, even relatively few unvaccinated seniors means more deaths -- and more crowded hospitals -- than would occur in a larger pool of younger adults. (Levin and Wingrove, 9/11)
Some 80 million private sector employees will be required to get a Covid vaccine or weekly Covid test under the federal rules announced by President Joe Biden last week. But don't assume that the workers you come in contact with every day will be covered by the mandate, which only applies to businesses with 100 or more employees. In addition to those 80 million workers, there are another 43 million employees who work at companies that employ fewer than 100 people — and who are not covered by that federal mandate. (Isidore, 9/12)
The email chains and phone calls among tribal leaders and lawyers started soon after President Joe Biden announced a sweeping plan Thursday to vaccinate millions of people against COVID-19. Large private employers must require employees to get vaccinated or face frequent tests. Federal employees, federal contractors and staffers of many health care facilities must also get vaccinated. But how will those requirements affect tribal governments and the businesses they operate? “We’re all trying to understand what the president’s six-point plan means,” said Mary Pavel, a Washington, D.C., attorney and former chief counsel for the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. (Young, 9/11)
The trade group that represents consumer brands including Coca-Cola (COKE), Kellogg (K) and Campbell Soup (CPB) fired off a letter to President Joe Biden on Monday with a laundry list of questions about his new vaccine mandate. In the letter, Consumer Brands Association CEO Geoff Freeman called for "immediate clarity" on the administration's new Covid-19 Action Plan. (Egan, 9/13)
In related news about mandates —
A group of Los Angeles Police Department employees has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the city’s mandate that all L.A. employees be vaccinated against COVID-19. The lawsuit, filed Saturday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, claims the mandate violates the employees’ constitutional rights to privacy and due process, and asks the court to provide immediate and permanent relief from the requirement. The six LAPD employees suing include individuals “who could not assert a medical or religious exemption” to the vaccine requirement, as well as individuals who have “experienced and recovered from COVID-19" and have natural antibodies to fight the virus, the complaint states. (Rector, 9/12)
Like other Republican governors around the country, Tate Reeves of Mississippi reacted angrily to the coronavirus vaccine mandates President Biden imposed on private businesses. Declaring the move “terrifying,” he wrote on Twitter: “This is still America, and we still believe in freedom from tyrants.” There is a deep inconsistency in that argument. Mississippi has some of the strictest vaccine mandates in the nation, which have not drawn opposition from most of its elected officials. Not only does it require children to be vaccinated against measles, mumps and seven other diseases to attend school, but it goes a step further than most states by barring parents from claiming “religious, philosophical or conscientious” exemptions. (Stolberg, 9/12)
Republicans officials on Sunday made further threats of legal action against President Biden’s sweeping plan to get tens of millions of American workers vaccinated, with even those who openly urge that people get shots claiming that the mandate violated civil liberties. (Delkic and Heyward, 9/12)
