{"id":18601,"date":"2020-06-30T17:40:59","date_gmt":"2020-06-30T21:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=18601"},"modified":"2020-06-30T17:41:43","modified_gmt":"2020-06-30T21:41:43","slug":"why-wont-the-michigan-ag-investigate-the-extraordinary-number-of-nursing-home-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=18601","title":{"rendered":"Why won’t the Michigan AG investigate the extraordinary number of nursing home deaths?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nessel dismisses GOP request to probe nursing home deaths as partisan<\/h1>\n

Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News<\/p>\n

Attorney General Dana Nessel has dismissed as partisan a request by congressional Republicans to investigate the Whitmer administration\u2019s policies on coronavirus in nursing homes.<\/p>\n

Nessel, in response to\u00a0a letter led by House Republican Whip Steve Scalise, noted that\u00a0the lawmakers\u00a0didn\u2019t make similar inquiries into\u00a0GOP governors \u2014 only Democratic state executives in Michigan, New York, New Jersey, California\u00a0and Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Nessel wrote Monday that she was “deeply troubled” that the Republican lawmakers’ concern\u00a0“does not extend to all of the nation’s elderly.”<\/p>\n

“Genuine concern about the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable communities, like our elderly population, should compel you to review all states\u2019 policies to determine if and how they impacted medical outcomes within those communities, not just those that are led by Democratic governors,\u201d\u00a0Nessel wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have not \u2014 and will not \u2014 launch a criminal investigation simply because of someone\u2019s political affiliation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"Attorney
\nAttorney General Dana Nessel.
\n(Photo: Clarence Tabb Jr., The Detroit News)<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n

Nessel was responding to\u00a0Scalise and other\u00a0Republicans on a U.S. House coronavirus committee, whose letter last week was also signed by the six Republicans in Michigan’s congressional delegation.<\/p>\n

Scalise, the top Republican on the coronavirus panel, said Monday the idea that Nessel got a letter because Whitmer is a Democrat is “absurd and ignores reality.”<\/p>\n

“She got one because her governor was one of only five in the country that forced nursing homes to take in COVID-positive patients and then refused to answer questions about that deadly order,” Scalise said in a statement.<\/p>\n

“The 45 states that did not receive letters are led by both Democrats and Republicans because they didn\u2019t have disastrous orders like these.”<\/p>\n

Scalise previously wrote to Whitmer<\/a>, who\u00a0declined a request to turn over records and brief committee staffers on the state’s handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes.<\/p>\n

Whitmer has faced criticism for policies that permit the housing of individuals with the virus in isolated areas of existing nursing facilities.<\/p>\n

The state had\u00a0tracked 2,064 deaths and 7,304 cases of COVID-19 among nursing home residents through Thursday.<\/p>\n

Michigan\u00a0GOP lawmakers have said the governor should\u00a0have set up separate centers or field hospitals to care for individuals\u00a0with the coronavirus to limit its spread among the vulnerable populations in nursing facilities.<\/p>\n

The U.S. House Republicans claimed that Whitmer’s nursing home policies “likely contributed to the thousands of elderly deaths in Michigan,” alleging that state officials deviated from guidance from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.<\/p>\n

Whitmer on Monday said the\u00a0state followed guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when it came to nursing homes and is always willing to share the \u201cdata and decision-making\u201d regarding that policy.<\/p>\n

The governor also said she didn\u2019t have time \u201cto play partisan games\u201d in regards to the request from Congress and called the GOP lawmakers’ targeted request \u201cunfortunate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese were letters that were sent to five Democratic governors in battleground states in large part,\u201d Whitmer said in an interview on WDET-FM (101.9).<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t send one to Florida, which has been fudging their numbers and now has exponential growth that is unchecked. They didn\u2019t send it to Texas, which is in the same boat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whitmer noted Michigan\u2019s percentage of deaths in nursing homes was \u201ca lot smaller than other states,\u201d but that the pandemic\u2019s novel complications meant the state had to make decisions with the limited information it had at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I could go back in a time machine with the knowledge that we have today, back three months, would some decisions be (made) differently?\u201d she said. \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"U.S.
\nU.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana
\n(Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, AP)<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n

The congressional Republicans had asked Nessel to expand her “investigation” to include an April 15 order by Whitmer saying certain skilled nursing\u00a0facilities “must accept the return” of a resident who had been hospitalized if it could meet the medical needs of the resident.<\/p>\n

They also requested documents, information and communications between Nessel’s office, Whitmer’s office and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services regarding the investigation of nursing homes since Jan. 1.<\/p>\n

Nessel, whose office has not publicly acknowledged a nursing home\u00a0probe, said she was “surprised” the panel would make such a request without first verifying if she is in fact investigating.<\/p>\n

She highlighted federal data indicating Michigan had fewer or similar numbers of COVID cases among nursing home residents as Louisiana, Ohio, Georgia and Texas, and that Michigan had fewer nursing home deaths than Illinois, Massachusetts and Connecticut.<\/p>\n

“But again, I’m aware of no congressional request for investigation made to those attorneys general,” Nessel wrote.<\/p>\n

Scalise said Michigan was one of five states with the “strictest must-admit orders” for nursing homes.<\/p>\n

“The\u00a0grieving families affected\u00a0by Governor Whitmer\u2019s disastrous decision deserve answers, plain and simple, and we\u2019re not going to stop asking until we get them,” he said.<\/p>\n

mburke@detroitnews.com<\/em><\/p>\n

Staff Writer Beth LeBlanc contributed.<\/em><\/p>\n

__
\nhttps:\/\/www.detroitnews.com\/story\/news\/politics\/2020\/06\/29\/nessel-dismisses-gop-request-probe-nursing-home-deaths-partisan\/3280749001\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nessel dismisses GOP request to probe nursing home deaths as partisan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}