Michael Greenberg

replies:

I thank Terry Roethlein for his excellent letter. I share his misgivings about some of Governor Cuomo’s policies, and I, too, took note of a few mean-spirited laws in the recent budget he was able to ram through the state legislature on April 3, while the pandemic was at its peak in New York. Fortunately, the $400 million decrease in state Medicaid payments to public hospitals has been delayed, mainly because it threatened New York’s eligibility for federal coronavirus funds. The cut should be eliminated entirely and more funding added. Let’s hope that Cuomo and the legislature now understand the grave danger of weakening the public hospital system at the same time that private hospitals grow more “efficient” by scaling back their number of beds.

For the purposes of my article I decided to leave these issues aside. My aim was to reflect, in real time, Cuomo’s performance during the shattering period of mid-March to mid-April: his costly and incomprehensible delay in closing down New York, his panicked efforts to keep the health care system from collapsing, and his moments of inspired frankness, while we impotently watched from the solitude of a shared nightmare.

One senses that a powerful shift in political consciousness is taking place, without knowing where it will lead. At the same time, we are entering a period of eyewatering deficits. Even with federal aid (if it ever comes), spending cuts loom. It will be up to New Yorkers to ensure that they don’t fall on the working poor who have shouldered (and continue to shoulder) the pandemic’s most brutal consequences. A more aggressive tax on New York’s wealthiest class and a permanently equitable health care system are good places to start.