Our chief prosecutor’s last negative political move was his leading role in a case Attack on the Biden Administration Nursing home minimum staffing standards rule. J.approved by others Republican Attorneys General and the nursing home industry itself, Iowa Atty. General Bird, like Governor Reynolds, puts the interests of industry ahead of Iowa’s seniors and disabled residents of our state’s more than 400 nursing homes.

Perhaps Attorney General Brenna Bird should instead use her office to ensure that the excess funds are collected in a timely manner. Taxpayers’ money is $10 million ensuring that homes are owed to Iowans and that additional homes are not legally obligated to repay them.

Or Bird could investigate why taxpayers in Iowa are funding multimillion-dollar nursing home industry associations, groups that are against the interests of the organization’s residents, and why it goes both ways: more taxpayer money and less government oversight. Certainly, our Chief Law Enforcement Officer was not elected to travel to New York and attack/degrade/undermine and undermine trust in the judicial system that he, as a lawyer, is ethically obligated to support. I can list a number of official actions by Bird that have little to nothing to do with promoting the interests of Iowans and that voters did not demand of him or expect him to follow. But I’ll leave that for another day.

Bird’s 66-page lawsuit parrots the nursing home industry scare tacticsand ignores the private capital interests that largely deprive for-profit owners, operators, and residents of care and reap billions of dollars from taxpayers. Even though nursing homes in Iowa are among the worst personnel violationBird and Gov. Kim Reynolds are willfully ignoring preventable harm and deaths that are known to be commonplace.

Republicans in Congress have launched similar legislative efforts to effectively eliminate minimum staffing requirements now and forever. All of these industry-inspired efforts are happening despite the fact that research studies from more than two decades ago found that even then higher staffing numbers were required to provide adequate care than the Biden rule requires. Senators Warren, Sanders, Blumenthal, and Representative Schakowsky wrote a letter on September 13, 2024, to the CEOs of three of the largest, publicly owned, for-profit nursing home companies.a term that gives an idea about The shame of Bird’s case. I recommend this to him, Governor Reynolds, and all Iowans.

Our next election is coming soon. “Who cares about Iowa’s nursing home residents” would be a great question to answer before you cast your vote, now and in the future.

Dean Learner is the former director of the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals, former Deputy Iowa Attorney General, and former Deputy Secretary of State. Learner is also a former Counselor to the CMS Director of the Division of Nursing Homes, a former board member of the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care, and a decades-long advocate for the health, safety, and well-being of Iowa’s nursing home residents. .

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