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 President Joe Biden, a Democrat, said last Thursday he will enforce
the mandate starting Jan. 4.
The attorneys general of Missouri, Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa,
Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and New Hampshire
jointly filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern
District of Missouri in St. Louis.
"Placing this additional mandate on healthcare facilities and
employees will exacerbate this problem and will likely lead some
facilities – particularly those in underserved, rural areas – to
close due to an inability to hire sufficient staff," Kansas Attorney
General Derek Schmidt said in a statement.
The lawsuit said the federal mandate intruded on states' police
power and is unlawful under the Administrative Procedures Act
because there was no comment period before its release.
On Nov. 4, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the
regulator for the two federal health programs, issued an interim
final rule it said covers over 10 million people and applies to
around 76,000 healthcare providers including hospitals, nursing
homes, and dialysis centers.
An interim final rule is effective immediately without the standard
comment period that follows publication. There is a 60-day comment
period following its publication, however.
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 Providers that fail to comply
with the mandate could lose access to Medicare
and Medicaid funds. Medicare serves people 65
and older and the disabled. Medicaid serves the
poor.
The lawsuit said the CMS rule was heavy handed
and did not take local factors and conditions
into account.
CMS has said there have not been widespread
resignations within healthcare providers that
have already mandated vaccines, including 41% of
U.S. hospitals, and that applying the mandate to
all healthcare settings ensures staff cannot
quit one setting to seek jobs in another.
"With many employers already mandating
vaccination, and with nearly all local (and
distant) healthcare employers requiring
vaccination under this rule, we expect that such
effects will be minimized," the agency said in
introducing the rule.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; editing by Grant
McCool)
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