Recently, the United States Supreme Court issued rulings on two different cases involving vaccine mandates: the first case involved the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) which mandated that all healthcare workers be vaccinated as a condition of participation for Medicare enrolled providers. The CMS regulation affects all Medicare providers who render healthcare services to Medicare beneficiaries. The second case involved the more widely known OSHA mandate requiring employers with 100 more employees to have all employees including contractors vaccinated. Both cases were widely scrutinized and challenged throughout the lower-level court systems and eventually made it to the Supreme Court of the United States. Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court upheld the CMS mandate but overturned the OSHA mandate. This episode of health law talk takes a deep dive into the specific rulings and discusses the rationale behind the court's rulings in overturning the OSHA mandate while upholding the CMS mandate.
