the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Washington DC, Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas has introduced a bill to repeal the requirement that health care workers get vaccinated or get fired. Hospitals and clinics can lose their Medicare and Medicaid payments if they don’t comply with the edict. Dr. Marshall now has enough cosponsors to force a floor vote, likely in early January.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) mandate has been challenged and mostly lost in court across the country, and many health systems have welcomed unvaccinated doctors and nurses to avoid a capacity crunch.
The CDC has not updated their estimate of unvaccinated health care workers in a couple of months, but as of September 15 they found that only 70% were vaccinated, with the lowest vaccination rates in rural critical access hospitals.
In New York The governor’s office on September 27th said that about 16 percent of New York state’s medical workers, or 72,000 people, remained unvaccinated.
Consider that doctors and nurses who have worked through the pandemic have bene exposed to COVID literally thousands of times, have likely had the disease and recovered. Congress should respect medical professionals to make their own medical judgments, not fire them for disagreeing with the president.
Who do you really think knows more about the risks associated with COVID and the vaccines: Medical professionals or politicians?