We have to assume that during the remaining three years of President Biden’s term, there will be more battles between POTUS and SCOTUS. But it is getting increasingly difficult to determine who is winning.
Take the recent SCOTUS decision upholding the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers in facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid payments. We all want healthcare workers to be safe, as well as the patients that they serve. But the timeline given for these healthcare workers to be 80%, then 90%, then 100% vaccinated, or else they lose their jobs, well, is it really going to do anyone any good if the staff at hospitals and nursing homes gets reduced further? The simple answer is, no.
Mandates often do not work, and they are usually polarizing. But in this case, healthcare providers need workers, vaccinated or not. The disconnect between this mandate, however well intentioned, and what is actually happening in the healthcare economy is, well, astounding. Healthcare providers can’t find workers, vaccinated or not. And because of the archaic reimbursement system we are burdened with, providers are unable to pay the higher wages that are needed to even attract new workers in today’s economy. This is especially true for skilled nursing facilities.
And as Omicron has proved, being vaccinated in this late stage of the pandemic is becoming more relevant to the person vaccinated than the patient in contact with the vaccinated healthcare worker. Thousands of people who have been vaccinated, and have received their booster shots, are getting infected, but usually with minor or no symptoms (fortunate for them). So, mandating that healthcare workers get vaccinated seems to not have the beneficial effect that regulators and legislators have expected. They get vaccinated, and then get Omicron, and then may or may not transmit it to a patient. And vaccinated with no symptoms would seem to be troublesome, because it gives the healthcare worker, and their employer, a certain level of misplaced confidence.
Don’t get us wrong, we are pro vaccines. But is now really the time for unvaccinated healthcare workers to lose their jobs when the current vaccines do not prevent them from getting the new variant, and spreading it to their patients? Is now the time to lose more healthcare workers? There has to be another way.
