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Biden inaction leaving Arizona seniors behind

BY KAREN BARNO Tribune Guest Writer

Arizona’s senior living facilities serve about 45,000 older residents, a population equal to the town of Prescott. These elderly grandparents, parents, veterans and retirees are being left behind by the Biden Administration, which has made combatting the COVID pandemic a top policy priority but has failed to deploy available federal resources to protect Arizona’s most vulnerable age group.

While our state’s senior living communities have fought hard to safeguard residents for the last 18 months, these communities need access to federal assistance ASAP. Without this vital help, many will close their doors, creating a housing crisis for seniors at the exact moment they need safe places to live.

Assisted living swiftly established new health protocols, added personal protective equipment, enhanced infection prevention and control measures and supported employees who accepted greater risk themselves with benefits like hero pay. These actions worked but came with at a substantial cost – one that has yet to be met by equivalent federal funding allocations. Nearly two-thirds of assisted living facilities reporting no COVID-related deaths at all, highlighting the effectiveness of preventative efforts. But to make their efforts a success, Arizona senior living communities incurred nearly $750 million in expenses and lost revenue due to the related slowdown in incoming residents while facilities remained locked down. Nationwide, senior living communities have suffered nearly $30 billion in expenses and losses.

Congress recognized that healthcare providers could not sustain losses on that scale and if they went bankrupt and closed it would compound a pandemic with a senior housing crisis. In 2020, bipartisan legislation created a Provider Relief Fund and supplied it with $178 billion with the intention of offsetting these losses and ensuring senior living communities in Arizona and across the country remained open. While Congress acted swiftly, the Biden Administration has not, leaving your neighbors in memory care, assisted living, and Alzheimer’s communities behind.

Only $14 billion of the Provider Relief Fund remains undistributed despite a resurgent virus. Of the money that has been distributed, less than 1 percent has gone to assisted living facilities. In Arizona, our 2,135 assisted living communities have collectively received approximately $15 million in federal aid to address nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars in expenses and losses. Members of Congress have recognized that failure to distribute federal relief funds quickly and equitably is not a path out of the pandemic, but a path toward bankruptcy. Arizona’s U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema has led a bipartisan group including Senator Mark Kelly to urge the Biden Administration to act, writing: “Immediate targeted financial relief that equitably provides resources to these caregivers as other comparable long-term care providers is necessary. These resources will help offset the continued expenses for PPE, staffing, infection prevention and control, seeBARNO page 18

On the World Series and Election Night

BY JD HAYWORTH Tribune Columnist

Whoever thinks there is no divine sense of humor may want to reconsider – especially after the latest occurrence of “the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November.”

In other words, Election Day, 2021… or, as it will forever be known in Atlanta, “World Champions Day.”

With an ethereal sense of timing, politics and the national pastime again collided. And in this instance, the “Home of the Braves” prevailed.

Opening Day of the baseball season brought a verbal brickbat, delivered by the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue via ESPN – which apparently now stands for “Expect Sports Politicized Nonstop.”

Sure enough, Joe Biden, though old, slow, and confused, apparently possessed enough verbal and muscle memory to use a “woke weapon.” During his ESPN interview, Joe attacked Georgia’s election reform law, calling it an “atrocity” and “Jim Crow on steroids,” ignoring the fact that the new statute expands early voting to 17 days statewide and gives counties the option to add two additional Sundays of voting for a total of 19 days of casting early ballots. Never mind the fact that Biden’s home state of Delaware provides no days for early balloting. Ol’ Joe then chimed in with his “remedy” of preference: Major League Baseball (MLB) should move the All-Star Game out of the Peach State. Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred — no “Mighty Manfred,” he – morphed into “Rollover Rob,” and hastily did Biden’s bidding, with the specious claim that moving the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver was the “best way to demonstrate our values as a sport.” If so, it was a curious way to demonstrate a commitment to racial justice.

When the All-Star Game exited Atlanta, a city with a population that’s 51 percent black and historically known as a center of Black commerce, the economic loss was estimated at $100 million. While MLB placed a higher value on virtue signaling than genuine support of a “majority minority city,” it’s worth noting that “Corporate COVID” also infected Atlanta-based businesses. Both Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines succumbed to the virtue virus, denounced the Georgia election reforms. and were apparently fine with the loss of the All-Star Game.

But an interesting thing happened in Atlanta. The Braves discovered a vaccine for virtue signaling: victory.

Proving that the late, great, catcherturned-author-turned-broadcaster Joe Garagiola was right when he titled his book “Baseball is a Funny Game,” the Braves had the last laugh.

Defying the odds, and their own wonloss record, the Braves finally moved above .500 for good on Aug. 6, then finished the regular season with 88 wins and 73 defeats.

In the post-season, Atlanta outmuscled Milwaukee, found unlikely star power to defeat the Dodgers, and brought the Astros back to earth, winning the World Series 4-2. The series finale in Houston was especially impressive, as the Braves shutout the Astros, 7-0. “Shutout” also accurately describes the policy triumphs of the Biden Administration in its first year. Simply stated, there are none. An illegal invasion. A shameful abandonment of Americans in Afghanistan. Runaway inflation. Crippled supply lines. Radical school boards and leftist politicians denying parental authority, replacing education with indoctrination.

That last disturbing development prompted a political upset as unlikely as the Braves’ World Championship that occurred the same night.

Deep-blue Virginia, dependably Democrat, elected a Republican governor. Glenn Youngkin, who went from underdog to governor-elect, described his victory as a triumph of everyday Virginians, based on fundamental principles and a rejection of seeHAYWORTH page 18