More than 100 Republican members signed a letter to Chiquita Brooks, the administrator of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), opposing the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers.
Republican Reps. Vern Buchanan of Florida and Larry Bucshon from Indiana called for CMS to cancel their plans to pursue the vaccine mandate that would affect millions of U.S. health care workers.
Last week, a federal court stopped the mandate to administer vaccines to health care workers in 10 US states. CMS temporarily suspended enforcement of the rule.
“This one-size-fits-all big government mandate has the potential to hammer small and medium-sized health care providers across the country through increased compliance costs, staffing shortages, and crippling fines at a time when they can least afford it,” Buchanan told Fox News in a Monday email.
“Even worse, this unconstitutional power grab could reduce access to care for millions of seniors who rely on these businesses for essential health care services,” Buchanan stated.
“Hospitals, long-term care facilities, and other health care providers are struggling to keep their doors open, and those located in rural areas are disproportionately feeling the impacts of chronic, widespread labor shortages that are being exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Bucshon, a medical doctor, stated to Fox News.
“Today, I led a letter with more than 110 members of Congress asking the Biden administration to repeal their federal vaccine mandate on health care workers that stands to threaten patients’ access to quality medical care, as well as the size and scope of our nation’s health care industry during the worst global health crisis of our generation,” he continued to state.
The letter warned the CMS administrator that implementing a federal vaccination mandate would only serve to worsen America’s “growing shortage of health care workers”.
“It is difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile the rationale for implementing a mandate like this at the tail end of the pandemic while we, as a nation, are struggling to staff hospitals, physician offices and other ancillary providers,” the letter reads.
While the lawmakers acknowledged that they support CMS’s goal of protecting American patients’ health, they warned that the mandate for health care workers to administer vaccines “will threaten its stated goal.”
“We strongly urge you to abandon implementing this onerous new rule and instead heed current statistics that show seniors are vaccinated at a higher rate than the rest of the population of vaccinated Americans while also uniquely vulnerable to disruptions in the health care system and consider the potentially negative consequences this mandate will have on the size and strength of our health care workforce,” they also wrote.
Buchanan, Bucshon, and 113 House Republicans are also included in the letter, including high-profile Reps. Elise Stefanik, Jim Banks, Indiana, and Dan Crenshaw, Texas.