By New York Post (Politics) | Created at 2025-03-07 01:11:14 | Updated at 2025-03-09 02:07:16
2 days ago
House Republicans from New York are asking federal health agencies overseen by Robert Kennedy Jr. to rule on whether ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo violated federal policy by sending elderly patients to nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The congress members want Kennedy’s department to weigh in on whether Cuomo’s controversial March 25, 2020 order telling such facilities to accept recovering or “stabilized ” COVID patients matched federal guidelines during 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, told The Post.
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 said.
The congress members noted that a house subcommittee’s GOP majority report said the policy was “inconsistent” with federal guidance — and that even a Democratic minority report said the edict “arguably contradicted federal CMS guidance.”
The House GOP members also asked why Cuomo, who was previously married to Kennedy’s sister, Kerry, would have scrapped the policy less than two months after it went into effect if it met guidelines.
The revised May 10, 2020 Cuomo policy forbade hospitals from releasing patients unless they tested negative for COVID-19 and barred hospitals from discharging a patient to a nursing home unless the operator certified he could take care of the patient.
Rich Azzopardi cited a US Department of Justice watchdog report into leaks to the media about the agency’s investigations into pandemic-related nursing home deaths that concluded the disclosures were partisan hits on Democrats and aimed at 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 said.
“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 court cases involving this nursing home issue were dismissed and three separate DOJ probes, as well as one done by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, were closed after concluding no laws were broken and there was no evidence of wrongdoing, Azzopardi said.
The Cuomo spokesman also 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 few independent studies claimed the March 25, 2020 nursing home directive, during the six weeks it was in effect, did cause additional deaths of nursing home residents.
Kennedy, the CDC and CMS had no immediate comment.
