Failing New York’s Elderly: Cuo’s Nursing-Home Fiasco
Michael Goodwin is spot-on in his evaluation of Gov. Cuomo’s coronavirus policies, but he doesn’t go far enough (“Too little, too late for those now dead,” May 11).
Societies are judged by how they treat their most vulnerable. Nursinghome residents figure prominently in that category. In Cuomo’s eyes, they were apparently expendable.
Given the thousands of nursing-home residents who died as a result of his administration’s policies, the families of those poor souls should band together and sue Cuomo and New York state for wrongful death. Only then will the emperor of the Empire State be held accountable for his epic misdeeds.
Mark Stuart Ellison
Brooklyn
Goodwin criticizes Cuomo’s policy forcing nursing homes to accept COVID patients.
I agree it was a mistake that should never have been made. It’s like telling non-swimmers they have to stay in the deep end of the pool.
But Goodwin writes in the second paragraph: “Cuomo’s pride and political calculations don’t allow him to admit error.”
It seems to me that is also a valid criticism of the person sitting in the Oval Office, who, if I can use a line from a Dirty Harry movie, is a “legend in his own mind.” Just ask him. Gerard Moore
Ocean View, NJ
In a letter to The Post last month, I gave Cuomo a thumbs-up. I wrote that he seemed on top of things, noting that his usual arrogance was muted.
Then we found out that his Health Department was forcing nursing homes to take in elderly people with the virus.
The same facilities that could not allow family visits for fear of contamination were to welcome people who had the disease.
Unbelievably, he has defended this, falsely stating that if the homes couldn’t handle this safely, they didn’t have to take the patient, despite evidence to the contrary. He’s now going after the nursing homes for doing what they were ordered to do.
Unlike the governor, I can admit a bad mistake. I now rescind my thumbs-up and give him a different finger. George Czerniawski
Brooklyn
On its face, the new executive order issued by Gov. Cuomo requiring staff testing at nursing homes and implementing fines for non-compliance with the testing and reporting requirements appears to address his administration’s mismanagement of the COVID crisis in skilled nursing facilities.
Unfortunately, the order does nothing to help keep nursing-home residents safe, as the directive does nothing more than allow nursing-home owners to police themselves
when it comes to providing adequate care — never a good idea.
This makes Cuomo’s granting of immunity for negligent care a virtual death sentence for many residents. With family members unable to visit, there is no one around to witness wrongdoing.
So there will be little, if any, record of inadequate care or understaffing. John Dalli
Mineola
At the start of this crisis, the governor said he would take responsibility for problems arising out of mismanagement of the outbreak. To paraphrase, he said to “blame him.”
Yet he’s still not taking responsibility for the devastation the March 25 mandate caused in nursing homes. Not that he is blaming anyone else (yet), but he is claiming all was done in the best interest of the nursing homes.
Was it really? Placing COVID-19-positive residents with the highest risk category of people is a responsible thing to do?
I beg to differ, governor. It is time to place the blame for many of the nursing-home deaths where it belongs. Robert Fishman
Somers
Cuomo says the order for nursing homes to take COVID-19 patients was put in place to make sure that such patients were not discriminated against.
What does this even mean? How can it be discriminatory to not place potentially infected patients in the midst of those most vulnerable to the virus? Political correctness run amok. James Cusumano Saint Augustine, Fla.