Nursing home liability waivers may have been our nation’s worst public policy during the COVID-19 pandemic

By Kent R. Kroeger (July 30, 2021)

In the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic, bar owners on the iconic 6th St in Austin, TX boarded up their windows to avoid break-ins (Photo by Leah Rodgers; used under the CCA 4.0 International license.)

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Nursing home liability waiver laws, on the books in 19 U.S. states at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, may have been responsible for 20 to 50 thousand COVID-19 deaths — representing nearly 6 percent of all U.S. COVID-19 deaths.

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[All data used in this essay is available on GITHUB here.]

Last week, the Biden Justice Department decided not to open a civil rights investigation into the possibility that New York state officials intentionally manipulated data regarding nursing home deaths in an attempt to obfuscate the relatively high number of COVID-19 deaths within nursing homes.

A Justice Department letter sent by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Joe Gaeta to congressional Republican lawmakers read: “Based on that review, we have decided not to open a Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act investigation of any public nursing facility within New York at this time.”

A similar letter was sent to state officials in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Apparently, the Justice Department is still considering…