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Today, Congressman Rick W. Allen (GA-12) voted for legislation that would repeal the Public Health Emergency (PHE) declaration for COVID-19 and end the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers.

H.R. 382, the Pandemic is Over Act, would end the PHE first declared by Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar on January 31, 2020. By law, such a declaration is limited to 90 days and must be renewed to continue. The PHE for COVID-19 has been renewed 12 times, most recently on January 11, 2023. The PHE is currently scheduled to expire in mid-April.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has predicted that this legislation will reduce government spending by $2 billion over the next ten years.

H.R. 497, the Freedom for Health Care Workers Act, would terminate the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Interim Final Rule which currently requires all providers participating in the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs to establish vaccination requirements among their staff.

The rule was published in the Federal Register on November 5, 2021 and took effect on February 28, 2022. At the time, CMS estimated the rule would cost $1.3 billion to implement and affect 2.4 million health care workers in its first year alone.

After voting, Congressman Allen made the following statement:

“For years now, the Biden administration has abused its emergency authorities to inflict a radical agenda on the American people in an attempt to control all aspects of our lives. There’s no better example than the authoritarian vaccine mandates imposed on everyone from our military personnel to frontline health care workers.

“Moreover, the mandate on health care workers has only worsened the workforce shortages that have plagued providers long before the pandemic began, especially in our rural communities. If President Biden wants to show appreciation for America’s health care workers, he should start by restoring the basic freedoms which his vaccine mandate took from them.”