Home Republicans from New York are asking federal well being companies overseen by Robert Kennedy Jr. to rule on whether or not ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo violated federal coverage by sending aged sufferers to nursing houses through the COVID-19 pandemic.
The congress members need Kennedy’s division to weigh in on whether or not Cuomo’s controversial March 25, 2020 order telling such services to simply accept recovering or “stabilized ” COVID sufferers matched federal tips through the early pandemic.
“Five years ago, over 15,000 vulnerable New Yorkers died in nursing homes because of a reckless directive that forced COVID-positive patients into ill-prepared nursing home facilities after kicking them out of hospitals” Rep. Mike Lawler, the Hudson Valley congressman who drafted the letter, instructed The Put up.
The March 6 letter was co-signed by GOP Reps Nicole Malliotakis, Nick Langworthy, Claudia Tenney, Nick LaLota and Andrew Garbarino.
“I’m demanding the CDC [Centers for Disease Control] and CMS [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] tell us the truth: Did Cuomo’s order follow federal guidelines, or did he defy them? Families of our constituents deserve answers, not excuses,” Lawler stated.
The congress members famous {that a} home subcommittee’s GOP majority report stated the coverage was “inconsistent” with federal steering — and that even a Democratic minority report stated the edict “arguably contradicted federal CMS guidance.”
The Home GOP members additionally requested why Cuomo, who was beforehand married to Kennedy’s sister, Kerry, would have scrapped the coverage lower than two months after it went into impact if it met tips.
The revised Might 10, 2020 Cuomo coverage forbade hospitals from releasing sufferers except they examined detrimental for COVID-19 and barred hospitals from discharging a affected person to a nursing residence except the operator licensed he may handle the affected person.
Wealthy Azzopardi cited a US Division of Justice watchdog report into leaks to the media concerning the company’s investigations into pandemic-related nursing residence deaths that concluded the disclosures have been partisan hits on Democrats and geared toward impacting the 2020 election.
“It is also indisputable that the Inspector General investigated this issue and found that the Department of Justice corruptly used its power to go after Governor Cuomo and other Democratic governors over COVID in nursing homes for purely political purposes,” he stated.
“It also concluded that New York’s nursing home policy was consistent with federal guidance, that a dozen states — Democratic and Republican — had similar protocols, and that those states had worse infection and death rates than New York. The attorney general and an independent review ordered by New York State concluded the same.”
Civil courtroom instances involving this nursing residence problem have been dismissed and three separate DOJ probes, in addition to one finished by the Manhattan district lawyer’s workplace, have been closed after concluding no legal guidelines have been damaged and there was no proof of wrongdoing, Azzopardi stated.
The Cuomo spokesman additionally claimed “no credible study has ever linked nursing home admissions guidance to an increase in deaths, but rather to community spread that brought COVID into nursing homes months before the US government was even aware it was here.”
A number of impartial research claimed the March 25, 2020 nursing residence directive, through the six weeks it was in impact, did trigger further deaths of nursing residence residents.
Kennedy, the CDC and CMS had no quick remark.
