Nina Kohn wrote a piece in The Hill, “Nursing homes need increased staffing, not legal immunity.”
The piece explains how states are eviscerating protections for nursing home residents by granting providers immunity from negligence claims, and why this approach is not only dangerous but unjustified.
To read the full article click here.
ASI Faculty Affiliate, Nina Kohn wrote an Op Ed in The Hill, “Addressing the crisis in long- term care facilities.”
Bodies are piling up in long-term care facilities across the country and spiraling death rates show no signs of subsiding. These facilities are prime breeding grounds for infection. In addition to residents’ inherent vulnerability, measly sick leave policies encourage staff to come to work sick, and low pay leads direct care workers to hold multiple jobs — often at other long-term care facilities.
The result is staff are nearly perfect vectors for COVID-19, as outbreak patterns in Seattle suggest. Indeed, even prior to the pandemic, most nursing homes — including those earning “five stars” on the federal government’s Nursing Home Compare website — had documented infection control problems. To read the full article click here.
Nina Kohn addresses how ageism has shaped the COVID-19 pandemic in Washington Post article
When the novel coronavirus first emerged, the U.S. response was slowed by the common impression that covid-19 mainly killed older people. Those who wanted to persuade politicians and the public to take the virus seriously needed to emphasize that “It isn’t only the elderly who are at risk from the coronavirus,” to cite the headline of a political analysis that ran in The Washington Post in March. The clear implication was that if an illness “merely” decimated older people, we might be able to live with it. Read full article: The pandemic exposed a painful truth: America doesn’t care about old people