The Department of Justice has been criticized for what critics see as a politically motivated investigation into coronavirus deaths in state nursing homes.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating whether four Democratic-led states violated the civil rights of nursing home citizens by demanding that homes do not reject the readmission of other citizens who had COVID-19.
All 4 states had issued regulations to ensure that nursing home citizens with COVID-19 who weren’t enough to stay in hospitals were readmitted to their homes.
Host home advocates and former Justice Department officials have criticized the investigation as an openly partisan attack on Democratic governors. “This is not intended to solve a challenge that exists in retirement homes. He intends to embarrass Democratic governors,” said Jonathan Smith, Washington’s chief executive. The Committee on Civil Rights and Urban Affairs lawyers and former chief of the civil rights department under the Obama administration said of the investigation.
The Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, Eric Dreiband, sent letters last week to four Democratic governments. Andrew Cuomo Andrew Cuomo NYT Editorial Board Reminds Ginsburg: She ‘Will Always Have Two Relics’ In New York City To Honor Ginsburg With Statue In Brooklyn Stunned New York Bus Driver Through Passenger Told Her To Wear One MORE New York Mask, Phil Murphy of New Jersey Pennsylvania Court Extends Postal Vote Deadline Barr: Coronavirus Blocks Largest Intrusion on Civil Liberties Since Slavery The Hill’s Morning Report – Sponsored through the Pilots Association Airline – Trump, Biden may no longer be another weather PLUS Pennsylvania replacement and resident Gretchen WhitmerGretchen WhitmerMichigan lays on the lawn with the sign ‘Put mail on ballots here Sunday shows trailer: Judge Ginsburg dies, sparking a partisan war for the Feehery pre-election vacuum: a Republican wave election More surprisingly, Michigan may simply p edit documents and data on how public nursing homes in their states have responded to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Protecting the rights of some of the top vulnerable members of society, adding older citizens of retirement homes, is one of our country’s top obligations,” Dreiband said in a statement.
The firm said it was “evaluating whether to open an investigation,” meaning it hadn’t initiated an investigation.
Smith said it was up to the company to publish an initial investigation.
Usually, “this would be resolved at a much, much quieter point of decline, because you’re much more likely to get the data you’re looking for and use it if there’s a challenge that justifies an investigation or not,” Smith said.
The Department of Justice said it plans to launch an investigation under the Institutional Civil Rights Act, a 40-year federal law designed to protect Americans in government establishments such as prisons, prisons, intellectual fitness services, and state-owned retirement homes.
However, 6% of all nursing homes in the country are public, raising questions about the scope of any prospective investigation.
The time for the announcement, which came in the middle of the Republican National Convention and just over two months before Election Day, also raised considerations that the Justice Department armed for political purposes.
“It’s an abuse of power. It intends to be an apolitical state of civil rights . . . and what the symptoms imply is that it’s being used to embarrass the president’s political opponents,” said Margo Schlanger, a law professor at the University of Michigan. who was the head of the civil rights official in former President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security.
Advocates of nursing home reform said nursing services deserved to be studied.
All 4 states that obtained letters from the Justice Department issued disputable orders early in the pandemic that nursing homes simply cannot turn away patients who have tested positive for COVID-19 as long as they are medically stable. , who sent patients to help lose capacity.
Cuomo in particular was criticized for his policy, which was nevertheless canceled in May.
Health advocates, nursing home citizens and their families, as well as nursing home operators, have said the policy is wrong and helped spread the virus among the country’s top citizens. state.
The pandemic “revealed what we show in general for the lives of others living in retirement homes, service houses, and other adult care facilities. And this has been reproduced, I think, largely through Cuomo, and to some extent also through [other governors], said Richard Mollot, executive director of the Long-Term Community Care Coalition.
“These citizens were simply not vital at all,” Mollot added.
Nursing homes were decimated through COVID-19, once the virus is installed in a nursing home, it can pass on to citizens and staff. Citizens of nursing homes account for about 35-40% of all coronavirus deaths in the United States.
According to the COVID Monitoring Project, more than 6,600 people died from COVID-19 in nursing homes and other long-term care services in New York City, representing 26% of the state’s deaths. This number may be higher because New York does not count the deaths of citizens transferred to hospitals.
Cuomo defended the policy, saying it followed federal rules and citizens’ long-term care services for discrimination. He called the complaint politically motivated and dismissed it as a “political massacre. “
Together with Whitmer, they rejected the Justice Department’s request, calling it “openly partisan misappropriation. “
In Congress, house majority leader James Clyburn (DS. C. ), president of the organization overseeing the federal reaction to coronavirus, presented extensive research into the country’s five largest for-profit retirement home companies. investigated a “politically based investigation” into a The Hill.
Lawyers said some Democratic governors should not be blamed.
“One component of the challenge is that the federal government has taken a step back from the outset in publishing specific express guidelines, whether for retirement homes and states, so they left it to states,” Mollot said.
“And the states did, for better or worse, what they could. And I think some of the policies that were adopted, for example in New York and New Jersey, reflected that,” Mollot said.
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