Connecticut lawmakers, caregivers decry Trump-era repeal of nursing home staffing rules
Connecticut lawmakers and caregivers are speaking out after a New York Times investigation found that the Trump administration’s repeal of federal nursing home staffing rules may have been influenced behind-the-scenes by campaign contributions from industry executives who opposed it.
“In many nursing homes, especially the for-profit nursing homes... There is nowhere near adequate staffing,” said U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, standing alongside U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, U.S. Rep. John Larson and a number of caregivers at a Friday press conference. “There is nowhere near the number of care hours that patients need to be well and to recover, but there is nowhere near enough staffing to make sure that workers are protected...in these homes where you don't have enough workers for the patients, it jeopardizes both the patients and the workers.”
Under federal law, nursing homes have historically been required to have a registered nurse on-site for at least 8 hours a day and to maintain sufficient staffing to meet residents’ needs, but no minimum staffing levels have been established.
Advocates and caregivers have long sounded the alarm about the impact of understaffing on the quality of care, workforce burnout, and more. Those calls to action came to fruition after former President Joe Biden finalized a rule that would increase staffing levels nationwide. Industry executives have pushed back since it was finalized in April 2024, citing hiring difficulties, especially in rural communities and filed a lawsuit to block it.
The New York Times was the first to connected the dots between the donations from top nursing home industry executives and the repealed rule, dating the efforts to last August. Since then, executives have donated an estimated $4.8 million to MAGA Inc., the primary super PAC supporting Trump.
After a private lunch between the president and industry executives, the federal administration began making its first real moves to delay the rule’s implementation, including a 10-year moratorium on the rule.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced in early December that the rule had been fully repealed.
Rob Baril, president of SEIU 1199NE, which represents caregivers across Connecticut, said hundreds of union members worked for years to get increased staffing levels, sharing personal experiences about how understaffing affects them. And to see it repealed by “pay-to-play corruption” is no surprise to him or to other caregivers in the field.
“A rule that experts say could save up to 13,000 lives every year was erased not because it wasn't needed,” he said. “But because powerful people paid to make that rule disappear.”
Especially in an aging state like Connecticut, addressing staffing shortages in nursing homes is necessary as demand for care — and its complexity— continues to rise.
Around 90% of nursing home beds are currently occupied in Connecticut, said Baril. As the state's older population increases over the next decade, by 2035 there could be a 3,000-bed shortage, and by 2045, a 9,000-bed shortage.
“We know that this problem is only going to explode across Connecticut and the rest of the country. So the question is really very simple: what happens when seniors need more care, but fewer workers can afford to stay and fewer facilities can safely operate?” he said. “This is a crisis we can prevent, but only if elected leaders stand up to the nursing home industry.”
For example, Johannah Alabi, a certified nurse aide who works on a dementia unit, said the unit is supposed to have six CNAs per shift but has often had only three scheduled to care for about 37 patients.
Many residents have complex needs and serious psychological conditions that can make them emotional, aggressive, or confused, Alabi said, requiring patience, supervision, and safety.
“So, we are working 80 hours just to survive, and now we have to spend our whole money on supplies, because sometimes we go to work there is no gloves... That is not sustainable, that is not respect, and that's not care,” she said.
Dori Harrington, a licensed practical nurse and another union member, said she doesn’t work at the same corporation as Alabi but sees the same issues at her workplace.
For the last several years, Harrington said, most of the CNAs walk into work with hygiene products and other necessities after supplies run out and aren’t replaced. Her facility, at the same time, is seeing cuts to its already limited personnel. Harrington said one unit, which can house up to 70 patients, is now staffed by only one nurse, instead of two.
At the end of the day, when a facility is short-staffed, its residents who pay the price, said Mairead Painter, the state’s long-term care ombudsman. Her office receives nearly daily calls about the different ways understaffing impacts the quality of care. She said, for example, that they’ve heard of residents who are told to use the bathroom in their beds and wait to be cleaned up because the aide is working alone.
“We are subsidizing these corporate profits with taxpayer dollars while our residents suffer from preventable neglect. Staff are being burnt out, and the industry calls for higher Medicaid rates. My office will continue to answer all of these calls as they come in to the best of our ability. We're a very, very small team. We will continue to share these stories and expose the true cost of this grief to the residents, family members and staff out there,” Painter said.
To address it, Blumenthal said he plans to reintroduce legislation that would establish minimum staffing levels and other requirements to improve the quality of care. He has proposed the bill a few times now, but explained that it never passed, likely due to the strong influence of industry representatives in politics.
Murphy and Larson said they support the proposed bill, which Blumenthal called a part of the bigger fight “for justice against a scandal.”
“At some point, we all need care, and these caregivers need to be fairly compensated. That's our job to assure that we adopt in legislation, not just by regulation, but in binding law, in the statutes of the United States, the protections that these caregivers need so they can be more effective,” Blumenthal said. “If you pay someone fairly, they will be more effective than if you profiteer off their backs.’”