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Democratic Nursing Home Policy?
Having failed to bury news of his March 25 order prohibiting nursing homes from rejecting patients with COVID-19, Governor Cuomo tried blame-shifting. He was “following federal guidelines,” he claimed, citing a March 13 order from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The head of CMS rejects the claim.
“Under no circumstances should a hospital discharge a patient to a nursing home that’s not prepared to take care of those patients’ needs,” Verma said on Fox News Radio. “The federal guidelines are absolutely clear about this.”
We can read the fine print and decide for ourselves who is right here. Or we can think about this:
Though reports seem oddly cryptic on the point (typically saying “some states,” without saying which states), as far as I’ve been able to gather, every governor who had a policy of sending COVID-19-positive into nursing homes is a Democrat. We’re talking about at least NY, NJ, PA, MI, CA, MN.
I’ve been looking around, but have yet to find one Republican governor with a similar policy. (Correct me if I’m wrong, and I’ll gladly amend the post.)
What could account for this discrepancy? And why isn’t it in the news everywhere?
Published in General
Here is the answer to the question about DeSantis:
So you are right about this. DeSantis was absolutely correct, shrewd, and smart not to allow this. He did not allow the hospitals to discharge these patients back to the nursing homes from where they came.
But in all fairness to Baker, Baker did not know at that point that he would not need those hospital beds for a surge of cases that seemed possible at that time.
This isn’t quite true. Nursing home deaths did nothing for hospital bed availability.
PJ Media and the NY Post have covered interesting follow-the-money angles on New York State, Andrew Cuomo, NYS Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, the hospital lobbying machine in NYS, etc.
Per these angles, the Medicaid factor loomed large, for one thing. The allegation emerges that elderly NYC virus patients are/were overwhelmingly on Medicaid with its lower reimbursement levels, and this led NYC hospitals to push for early releases; why these early-release cases couldn’t be treated at the Javits Center, or even on board the USNS Comfort, mystifies me.
You realize wondering that assumes the governor or mayor had even a lick of sense. Assume they are total idiots and were in the grip of panic and the why becomes clear.
Yes. But in terms of the active number of cases in each state, people who might require hospitalization or were in the hospital and likely to stay there, yes it would have been a factor four to six weeks ago.
At any rate, in that comment, I was referring to hospital deaths.
I’m still waiting for the facts to come out about why a mentally disturbed 20 year old with the virus was put into a nursing home in Michigan. Why he was even assigned to share a room with the elderly person he later videoed himself beating up.
We need answers.
The news here is for whom they were clearing up the beds — Younger people.
They are apparently big donors to Cuomo.
I flew into New Orleans the day after Hurricane Ivan missed the city after looking like to would hit it squarely. The American College of Surgeons 2004 meeting was there and I did not know until the last minute if it would be cancelled. The hurricane swung east and hit Pensacola and Mobile Bay. When I arrived the day after the near miss there was zero sign of any precautions. No windows boarded up, etc. I was not at all surprised the next year when Katrina was a disaster.
Weather and population density are major factors.
How about criminal negligence?
Most nursing home patients are on Medicaid. In fact, families often “spend down” assets so the parent will qualify. That is considered a form of fraud and is pursued.
I don’t doubt it. But governors can’t control those factors. It’s interesting to me that among the factors they could control is nursing home policy. And on that point of policy we find a striking difference between Republicans and Democrats.
There’s no question the step taken by at least several Dem governors led to increased deaths in nursing homes. It’s telling that no Republican governor took that step, isn’t it?
I suspect more information will be coming out about this, notwithstanding the efforts of the MSM to downplay it.
Good questions. I am not aware of a Republican governor doing it, but I don’t keep track of other states. The NY Post has been holding Gov. Cuomo’s feet to the fire. I don’t know if there is a Republican/Democrat philosophic angle to it, but people should certainly be digging into this more.
Of course we know if it were Republican governors who had done this, it would be all over the news.
The more I hear about DeSantis, the more I like. For President in 2024? Vice President? A Pence/DeSantis ticket?
Oh, I agree, @katievs. The administrators of the nursing homes themselves were begging for the Covid+ patients be cared for in the Javits Center and on the Comfort but King Cuomo refused. Even if his thought was to clear bed space for the theoretical incoming wave of admissions, transferring infected elderly into vulnerable facilities and communities is unconscionable.
I’ve been looking around for a Republican example and asking facebook friends if anyone can name. So far nothing.
Here in PA, our Health Director has been taking some heat. She quietly moved her own 95-year-old mother out of nursing home into a hotel before the new policy was implemented and deaths in those facilities spiked.
You’re just not cynical enough Danny. What if moving elderly COVID patients to the Javits or the Comfort had saved lives and Donald Trump were credited? That would be bad. For Democrats.
The Galts may be that cynical. I’m not.
Oh wow. She moved her mother out. That a premeditated action. I was attributed it to ignorance and impulsive decision under pressure. But that opens this up to criminal implications.
I doubt it’s criminal. But it sure is hypocritical.
She claims that her mother makes her own decisions. But it certainly looks bad.
Here’s an article about that PA case. It’s pathetically soft-pedaled. Just imagine if were a Republican!
Okay, Baker did not go the Cuomo route. Our nursing homes in Massachusetts have not done well, but that isn’t our Republican governor’s fault. He did not order recovering covid-19 patients to be sent to nursing homes. He did consider it, but a day later abandoned the idea (article dated April 14):
There will be an accounting in those states that pursued these policies. The book Five Days at Memorial is about the lawsuits and criminal charges levied against a few of the doctors working at Memorial Hospital during Hurricane Katrina.
It seems clear that both DeSantis and Baker are still working the problem of the nursing home infections. Baker has committed $130 million dollars to beefing up the infectious disease resources available to nursing homes. DeSantis is also still working on the problem. What has changed these past three weeks is that these two governors are confident they can concentrate resources in nursing homes because it has become very clear that that is where this virus is doing its worst.
We’re learning as we go, and things will get better.
“She” happens to be the ugliest transgender I have ever seen. Facebook threatened me for saying this in a mild fashion.
Oh dear. And “she” started her career in medicine as a pediatrician! And is a noted health expert on the connection between mental and physical health. You can tell by looking. /sarc off
Here’s an updated look at what’s been happening in MA:
https://commonwealthmagazine.org/health/sudders-nursing-homes-still-work-in-progress/
@marcin I don’t know what he expects to find.
I know what he expects to find. The Governor and his hard working, faithful minions are blameless in this horrible catastrophe. Now, nursing home administrators are a different story and must be held accountable. I expect the same sort of BS to play out in NY.