President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that nursing home facilities nationwide must require staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19 if they wish to continue receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding. “Today I’m announcing a new step,” Biden said in remarks at the White House on Wednesday afternoon. “If you work in a nursing home and serve people on Medicare or Medicaid, you will also be required to get vaccinated.” The new policy would apply to over 15,000 nursing home facilities across the United States, which employ approximately 1.3 million workers and serve about 1.6 million nursing home residents. “More than 130,000 residents of nursing homes have sadly, sadly, over the period of this virus, passed away. At the same time, vaccination rates among nursing home staff significantly trail the rest of the country,” Biden said. “With this announcement, I’m using the power of the federal government as a payer of health care costs to make …