Table of Content
- NYPost
- Trump Mocked Sidney Powell's 'Crazy' Rigged Vote Tale, Hope Hicks Told Committee
- Governor Hochul Signs Warehouse Worker Protection Act Into Law
- Kellyanne Conway dishes on her eyebrow-raising dinner with disgraced ex-Gov. Cuomo
- Cuomo Nursing Home Scandal Worse Than Previously Reported, Aides ‘Spent Months’ Hiding Death Toll
- The Fallout for Cuomo Over Nursing Home Deaths
In August, the state health commissioner, Dr. Howard Zucker, said the department was still auditing the data and could not release it. James’s lawsuit claims the ownership group used more than a dozen different companies to divert money intended to fund care at the nursing homes. SentosaCare built several nursing homes on Long Island as well as in New York City and upstate, including the Woodmere Rehabilitation & Health Care Center, where it reportedly invested $90 million in 2015. New York State Attorney General Letitia James is filing lawsuits again nursing home owners who allegedly stole money and whose actions resulted in shoddy care of patients.
Cuomo later changed tactics, arguing instead that the directive couldn’t have been responsible for the COVID-19 deaths in the nursing homes because it was employees, rather than patients, who spread the virus. But advocates for nursing home residents have warned for years that regulators rarely enforce the law, allowing facilities to fill more beds without the legally required investments in staff, personal protective equipment and other resources. Ambulance workers pick up an elderly man in March 2020 from Cobble Hill Health Center, one of the nursing homes in New York City that registered an alarming number of COVID-19 deaths.
NYPost
Following the report's release, Andrew Cuomo held a press conference in which he stated criticism of nursing home deaths "has no basis in fact. It was pure politics and it was ugly politics. And now the report has the facts, and the facts tell the exact opposite story." In January 2021, Attorney General of New York Letitia James released a report finding that Governor Andrew Cuomo had understated the toll of COVID-19-related deaths in state nursing homes by as much as 50 percent. The scandal was made public on February 11, 2021, when the New York Post reported that Melissa DeRosa, a secretary and aide to Cuomo, privately apologized to lawmakers for the administration withholding the nursing-home death toll in fear then-President Donald Trump would "turn this into a giant political football". According to earlier reports, a Cuomo aide admitted to some Democratic legislators, in January, that Cuomo’s office deliberately hid the number of nursing home deaths from the public. Early accounts of the meeting, indicate that Cuomo’s administration hid the numbers in order to avoid federal scrutiny.
He launched daily COVID-19 press briefings which saw early acclaim, but often announced new pandemic policy and then required health officials "match their health guidance to the announcements." Cuomo issued an order on March 25, 2020 that all New York State nursing homes must accept residents that are medically stable. The order further stated that "o resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19". Attorney Seth DuCharme of the Eastern District of New York and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have launched an investigation into New York state's handling of nursing home deaths.
Trump Mocked Sidney Powell's 'Crazy' Rigged Vote Tale, Hope Hicks Told Committee
An audit of the numbers by a top Cuomo aide was finished months before it became publicly known. Two letters, drafted by the Health Department and meant for state legislators, were never sent,” the outlet added. The U.S. Eastern District is likely handing this investigation in part because U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss for the Southern District is the mother-in-law of Cuomo’s aide DeRosa and would have to recuse herself and office. And last week, Melissa DeRosa, Cuomo’s top aide, said that the state held off on releasing the fuller death count in August because of fears that President Donald Trump would use the information against Cuomo.
After The New York Post reported on Ms. DeRosa’s remarks, Mr. Cuomo admitted that the lack of transparency on the nursing home data had been a mistake. But he did not offer a full apology and lashed out at a Democratic lawmaker who had repeatedly pressed for investigations into the matter. On a private conference call in February, Melissa DeRosa, a top aide to Mr. Cuomo, told Democratic lawmakers that the state had withheld the data because it feared an investigation by the Trump administration. The governor’s office said the number of deaths that occurred outside homes was omitted because the Health Department “could not confirm it had been adequately verified.” A department spokesman added that the figures had not been ready in time to be included in the report.
Governor Hochul Signs Warehouse Worker Protection Act Into Law
"Look, whether a person died in a hospital or died in a nursing home … people died. People died. … By the way, the same people are dying today." He added that the March 25 directive followed federal guidance, and that the percentage of coronavirus deaths statewide that happened in nursing homes didn’t change from the spring to the fall — after the directive was reversed. Rich Azzopardi, a senior advisor to Cuomo, said controversy over use of the convention center and the hospital ship is a “red herring” because patients discharged to nursing homes were “outside of what the feds would accept” at those facilities.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers in New York are now reported to be reconsidering their decision to grant Cuomo emergency powers to contend with the Covid-19 crisis. The governor also faces a federal inquiry by the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District over his handling of nursing homes during the pandemic. CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, the host of Cuomo Prime Time, had been subject to a rule that CNN put in place in 2013 that prevented him from interviewing or covering his brother Andrew Cuomo. Governor Andrew Cuomo and his staff were in the spotlight after their alleged cover-up of nursing home deaths. The Justice Department’s civil rights division considered launching an investigation into how state-owned nursing homes in New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Pennsylvania responded to the pandemic, sending a letter in August to all four states’ governors demanding documents and information about conditions in those facilities.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo defends handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes
As the virus was racing through his nursing home, the head of Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill Health Center frantically emailed state health officials April 9 asking just that. Unlike West Virginia, New York has not mandated testing in its more than 1,150 nursing homes and long-term care facilities. Nor has Cuomo followed the lead of such states as Maryland, Florida, Tennessee and Wisconsin in dispatching National Guard teams to homes to conduct testing, triage and some care. And they are second-guessing a state directive that requires nursing homes take on new patients infected with COVID-19 — an order they say accelerated outbreaks in facilities that are prime breeding grounds for infectious diseases. The facility is owned in part by Bent Philipson, who also has an ownership stake in 68 nursing homes nationwide, and Benjamin Landa, who also has an ownership stake in at least 100 other facilities, according to investigators at the AG’s office. The report alleges the 588-bed facility used 13 companies and three fraudulent schemes to create the appearance of paying for services for the nursing home when in fact the money was diverted for personal profit, according to the Dec. 16 press release.
Requiring information regarding staff be included in an application to establish a nursing home. “The window of being truthful and asking for forgiveness is gone,” said Kim, whose uncle died in a Queens nursing home after suffering symptoms of COVID-19. The 242-page report by the NYSBA’s Task Force on Nursing Homes and Long-Term Care also blasts Cuomo for not reversing the Department of Health’s “unreasonable” mandate sooner than he did, saying it remained in effect weeks longer than necessary.
The Times subsequently reported on the more sustained effort to hide the death toll among nursing home residents. That effort included the burying of a scientific paper that incorporated the death data, the delayed release of a top Cuomo aide’s audit of the figures, and a failure to send two letters drafted by the Health Department that were meant for state legislators. Beginning last spring, Mr. Cuomo was criticized over a state requirement that forced nursing homes to take back residents who had been hospitalized with Covid-19 once they recovered. Critics said the policy had increased the number of virus-related deaths among nursing home residents. State lawmakers -- including many fellow Democrats -- began calling for Cuomo's resignation or impeachment after Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa reportedlysaid on a callthat nursing home death data had been withheld from state officials out of fear of repercussions from the U.S. Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced sweeping nursing home reform legislation to increase transparency, hold nursing home operators accountable for misconduct and help ensure facilities are prioritizing patient care over profits as part of the 30-day amendments.
State health officials contend that asymptomatic nursing home employees, not recovering COVID-19 patients, were the driving factor in nursing home outbreaks. And they have repeatedly noted that by law, nursing homes weren’t supposed to accept anyone they couldn’t adequately care for. A top aide to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo tells leading state Democratic lawmakers that the administration had reportedly withheld data on COVID-19 deaths at nursing homes to avoid federal scrutiny; Laura Ingle reports. New York has faced particular scrutiny for a March 25 state health department directive requiring nursing homes to take recovering coronavirus patients. A separate report, drafted by health officials, concluded that “pproximately 35 percent” of all COVID-19 deaths at that point in the pandemic “were nursing home residents” — a startling number. On March 11, 2021, the New York legislature launched an impeachment inquiry into Cuomo, both for his role in undercounting nursing home deaths and for several sexual harassment allegations recently reported against him.
More than 172,000 residents and employees of nursing homes and long-term care facilities have died of complications from Covid-19 in the United States, according to a Times analysis. In January, New York’s attorney general said the administration had undercounted nursing home deaths by several thousand. Mr. Cuomo later acknowledged as much, blaming the lower figure on fears that the Trump administration would use the data as a political weapon. A new report from the Albany Times Union revealed, according to its sources, Cuomo and New York Health Commissioner Howard Zucker directed health officials to prioritizethe governor'sown family and figures with ties to his administration in the early days of the pandemic. This reportedly included preferential testing for family members, including CNN anchor Chris Cuomo.
James’ investigators looked at a sample of 62 of the state’s roughly 600 nursing homes. They reported 1,914 deaths of residents from COVID-19, while the state Department of Health logged only 1,229 deaths at those same facilities. One unnamed facility, for example, had an official death toll of 11 but the attorney general’s probe found that 40 had actually died. The Cuomoites were publicly citing a nursing-home death toll of about 6,000 by ignoring home residents who’d died while hospitalized.
At the very least, the level of scrutiny Cuomo has attracted from the federal government is unusual. The FBI and the Department of Justice’s office in Brooklyn announced in mid-February that they were investigating Cuomo’s handling of the nursing home crisis. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has been credited for consulting nursing home experts in making policy during the early surge of the coronavirus pandemic. Laxton credits Murphy for consulting the medical professionals who work in nursing homes in devising his policy.
No comments:
Post a Comment