22 States Want CMS to Repeal Healthcare Vaccine Mandate

The healthcare vaccine mandate from CMS is no longer needed, according to attorneys general from nearly half the states.

A coalition of attorneys general from 22 states have filed a petition under the Administrative Procedures Act asking HHS and CMS to repeal the mandate requiring all patient-facing healthcare workers to receive full COVID-19 vaccination and any related guidance. The coalition is led by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen.

“The Biden administration relied on a purported emergency to sidestep its normal requirements and rush through its flagrantly unconstitutional mandate. But evidence available at that time, and evidence that has emerged since, demonstrates that full vaccination doesn’t prevent infection or transmission. Breakthrough infections are common, and studies increasingly show heightened health risks associated with the vaccines,” Attorney General Knudsen said in a press release.

CMS announced in November 2021 that hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, nursing homes, and other healthcare facilities must ensure staff are fully vaccinated or risk losing Medicare and Medicaid funding. Some states have sued HHS and CMS to go back on the mandate, which ultimately ended with the Supreme Court upholding required COVID-19 vaccination for healthcare workers in January.

Montana AG Knudsen argues that the ongoing “mandate has limited many patients’ access to needed medical care and imposed substantial costs on patients and healthcare workers without any corresponding benefits.”

“The Biden administration should have never imposed this mandate, and CMS should now throw it in the trash bin where it belongs,” Knudsen stated in the press release.

The petition claims that the healthcare vaccine mandate steps on the states’ sovereign right to enact and enforce their own laws, as well as exercise their policing power, including compulsory vaccination. The required vaccination also “fundamentally changes the deal under which [states] agreed to participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs,” they say.

Related guidance to the mandate also violates the Tenth Amendment; Nondelegation, Major Questions, and Anti-Commandeering doctrines; and the Spending Clause, according to the petition. Continuing to enforce the healthcare vaccine mandate would exacerbate labor shortages, especially in rural and frontier states like Montana.

Healthcare industry leaders, including the American Hospital Association (AHA), have expressed concerns that the healthcare vaccine mandate would worsen healthcare provider shortages during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Healthcare lost an estimated 1.5 million jobs during the first two months of the pandemic alone. Many of these jobs have returned since, with the healthcare industry recently seeing an increase by an average of 47,000 jobs per month, versus 9,000 per month in 2021, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.

Still, healthcare facilities are seeking workers as they continue to battle COVID-19 and other new threats, such as the recent surges of respiratory syncytial virus Infection (RSV) and the flu. Many hospitals are once again hitting capacity with the swarm of respiratry illnesses going around. Some of these facilities are also short-staffed, missing physicians and nurses as well as respiratory therapists. Hospital leaders are largely placing the blame on burnout, not required COVID-19 vaccination.

Most healthcare workers are already vaccinated. New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also show that about 87 percent of healthcare personnel have completed the primary COVID-19 vaccination series by April 2022. Over two-thirds of those workers also reported receiving a COVID-19 booster dose. Notably, CDC reports that booster coverage was higher among healthcare personnel who said they worked in a facility that required vaccination.

Other attorneys general signing onto the petition to repeal the CMS healthcare vaccine mandate include Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming.