© Provided by Washington Examiner The good times are over for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
No more glow-up media profiles and softball interviews. It's time for the Empire State nepotist to face consequences for his administration's efforts to cover up New York's COVID-19 nursing home death toll.
Six Republican senators agree. They said as much this week when they called on the Senate Finance Committee to open an investigation into the Cuomo administration's handling of the pandemic, including the estimated 11,000 New Yorkers who may have died as a result of the governor's order forcing infectious coronavirus patients into long-term care facilities.
"This committee has direct oversight on this issue and a responsibility to act when HHS is unable to do its job due to a state deliberately misleading investigators or health officials," the Republican senators said in a letter addressed to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon. "Nursing homes have been held accountable for failures to report coronavirus disease data to CMS, and state leaders should be as well."
The letter's signatories include Sens. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Tim Scott of South Carolina, John Barrasso of Wyoming, John Thune of South Dakota, and James Lankford of Oklahoma.
"For these reasons," the senators conclude, "we ask that you open an investigation and hold a committee hearing on New York's cover-up of nursing home deaths. Transparency and accountability are not partisan aims and must be taken seriously by this committee."
True, the FBI and the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn are already investigating the nursing home matter, but the more investigators, the merrier. Why not bring in additional hands, especially ones with the investigative powers and authority of the U.S. Senate? After all, it's not as if the Cuomo administration is being exactly forthcoming.
Indeed, the governor refuses to answer difficult questions about New York's nursing home death toll, what he knew, what his aides knew, and what they withheld from state health officials. He has managed all of this even after Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa admitted to state Democratic leaders the administration withheld nursing home data because it thought the information would "be used against [it]" by federal investigators. He has managed to avoid answering difficult questions about a New York Times report alleging his staffers buried the true nursing home death toll just so he could sell a book touting his "achievements" as a pandemic governor. The governor has even avoided answering difficult questions about the secretive "friends and family" program he allegedly established to ensure his inner circle received preferential COVID-19 tests and treatment, even before healthcare workers.
Cuomo is skating on pure spite and arrogance.
Indeed, when the governor is not avoiding pressers, a fun change of pace this year considering you couldn't get him away from cameras last year, he's busy burying reporters under piles of excuses, half-truths, outright lies, and self-pity. It's time to change all that.
Sasse and his colleagues make a good point in their letter to Wyden when they note, "1.2 million of our nation's seniors live in nursing homes and are disproportionately at risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19. Medicaid is the primary payer for 62 percent of nursing home residents and Medicare is the primary payer for another 12 percent."
Now that they mention it, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services should also launch its own investigation into New York's nursing home death toll.
After all, if Cuomo's office denied state health officials access to important nursing home data that could have been used to contain the pandemic more effectively, this would have affected not just New York but also the entire nation. As it happened, New York became superspreader No. 1, seeding all the other states and endangering vulnerable populations everywhere. If the Cuomo administration's obscuring of the data is in some way responsible for what eventually happened with the spread of COVID-19 throughout the country, wrecking vulnerable populations and healthcare systems in the other 49 states, well, that would certainly seem to fall under HHS purview.
Enough of Cuomo setting the terms of the debate. It's time for the Senate to investigate the matter.
Tags: Andrew Cuomo, New Haven, Coronavirus, Opinion, Editorial
Original Author: Washington Examiner
Original Location: Investigate Cuomo