Texas Hospital Faces Closure Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate: CEO

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Texas Hospital Faces Closure Over
COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate: CEO


By Jack Phillips
September 15, 2021
Updated: September 15, 2021



The chief executive of a hospital in Texas warned that his facility faces closure
after President Joe Biden’s announcement last week that most healthcare workers
get the COVID-19 vaccine.

If the mandate goes through, Brownfield Regional Medical Center CEO Jerry Jasper
said that “20 percent of my, probably 20 to 25 percent of my staff will have to go
away if that’s the case,” reported KCBD. Losing those workers, he said, would likely
cause his hospital to shut down, and losing Medicare and Medicaid money isn’t
an option either.

A White House stipulates that healthcare workers who work at hospitals and
facilities that receive either Medicaid or Medicare funds will have to get the
COVID-19 vaccine.

“It’s huge in our rural community as all the other rural communities. We all have
high poverty levels and stuff like that, so a lot of Medicaid usage in our communities
and stuff like that,” Jasper remarked to the station.

Another local hospital executive said that the mandate echoed Jasper’s sentiments.

“Well, it would be devastating for the community, frankly. We have a large percentage
of our revenue that comes from Medicare, Medicaid, and those kinds of products,”
Larry Gray, the CEO of the Seminole Hospital District, told the station.

While Gray said he encourages vaccines, mandates don’t work.

“I think the mandate is just a terrible message because if the vaccinations are working,
why do you have to mandate people to get the vaccines?” Gray asked. “What happens
to individual choice and medical decisions between the patient and their doctor, which
is all of the things that we’re trying to support.”

Other than mandates for healthcare workers, Biden also announced he would direct
the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration to enforce a rule against
companies with 100 or more workers that employees either get the vaccine or submit
to weekly COVID-19 testing. Federal workers and contractors will also have to get the
vaccine, he said.

In Upstate New York, a regional hospital’s executive said that the facility will have to
at least temporarily close down its maternity unit and will not be able to deliver babies
due to a mandate that was handed down by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Lewis County Health System Chief Executive Officer Gerald Cayer said that six employees
who were employed in the unit resigned, according to local media reports.

“If we can pause the service and now focus on recruiting nurses who are vaccinated,
we will be able to reengage in delivering babies here in Lewis County,” Cayer said
at a news conference on Sept. 10.