The rolling back of a nursing home staffing level mandate could lead to 13,000 preventable deaths, according to a June 3 letter written by public health economists and researchers.
Addressing ranking members of the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, researchers from New Haven, Conn.-based Yale University and Philadelphia-based University of Pennsylvania warned that the Trump administration’s budget reconciliation bill, recently passed in the House, would result in more than 42,500 deaths annually.
The total death estimate is based on projections that 7.7 million people would lose Medicaid or Affordable Care Act marketplace coverage in 2034, 1.38 million low-income Medicare beneficiaries could lose Medicaid coverage and CMS’ proposed minimum nursing home staffing rule would be repealed as part of the reconciliation bill.
The letter was signed by Rachel Werner, MD, PhD, Norma Coe, PhD, and Eric Roberts, PhD, from the University of Pennsylvania, and Alison Galvani, PhD, Abhishek Pandey, PhD, and Yang Ye, PhD, from Yale University.
Read the full letter here.
