05/06/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 05/06/2024 11:44
Since 2018, the nursing home industry has paid nearly $650 million in buyouts, dividends, and salaries to executives and shareholders.
"We are grievously disappointed by the nursing home industry's opposition to the Administration's efforts to ensure these residents receive high-quality care, and seek an explanation for why… for-profit nursing home companies claim they cannot afford to meet CMS' new minimum staffing standards. "
Letter Text to Brookdale Senior Living (PDF) | Letter Text to Ensign Group (PDF) | Letter Text to National HealthCare Corporation (PDF)
Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), along with U.S. Representatives Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) sent letters to three of the largest public, for-profit nursing homes in the country - Brookdale Senior Living, Ensign Group, and National HealthCare Corporation - highlighting the discrepancy between their opposition to a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposal to set minimum staffing levels for nursing homes, and the industry's massive payouts in buyouts, dividends, and salaries to executives and shareholders, totaling almost $650 million dollars since 2018. The letters follow a November 2023 report from Senators Warren, Sanders, and Blumenthal, which found that the CMS proposal would result in higher quality care, fewer deficiencies in care, and lower levels of patient abuse.
"(We) seek an explanation for the discrepancy between (your organization's) massive payouts in executive salaries, stock buybacks and dividends, and the nursing home industry's simultaneous opposition - based on claims that they are too expensive - to new rules to increase staffing and protect nursing home residents. These two competing claims do not add up," wrote the lawmakers. "(The) nursing home industry diverts hundreds of millions of dollars in cash away from nursing home staff and patient care, and into the pockets of company executives and shareholders."
On April 22, 2024, CMS finalized a new rule to set a floor for minimum staffing requirements in nursing homes. The new standards also required that all nursing homes have at least one registered nurse on site 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. Since announcing the rule, the nation's largest public, for-profit nursing homes have vehemently opposed this measure, arguing the rule would be too costly to enforce and force closures.
However, the letters reveal that, since 2018, three members of the American Health Care Association (AHCA) - the largest association representing long-term and post-acute care providers in the U.S. - which are also among the largest public, for-profit nursing homes in the United States, have paid out nearly $650 million in stock buybacks, dividend payments, and rich rewards to top executives, including nearly $118 for Brookdale Senior Living, $300 million for the Ensign Group, and over $226 million for National HealthCare Corporation.
"There are approximately 1.2 million nursing home residents in the United States. We are grievously disappointed by the nursing home industry's opposition to the Administration's efforts to ensure these residents receive high quality care, and seek an explanation for why … for-profit nursing home companies - which handed out nearly $650 million in buybacks and dividends and have richly rewarded their top executives - claim they cannot afford to meet CMS' new minimum staffing standards," the lawmakers concluded.
Senator Warren has led the fight for stricter oversight of nursing homes and increased transparency:
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