Life comes at you fast, as the saying goes, or as the case may be in this era of a viral pandemic, death comes at you fast. Sadly it is the latter for the citizens of New York who will pay the price for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) 2015 decision to not fix a shortfall and buy the recommended 16,000 ventilators to shore up the state’s stockpile in case of a pandemic.
Cuomo spent more money than the cost of the ventilators on a solar panel boondoggle, reports former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey (R) in a syndicated column published this past week. McCaughey reports the Cuomo administration decided instead to establish “triage officers” to decide in a crisis who would get a ventilator and who would be left to die.
It has also been reported a ventilator lottery would be an option in a pandemic crisis. Now with the COVID-19 Chinese coronavirus overwhelming New York hospitals, Cuomo is begging for ventilators.
NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo gestures toward a hospital ventilator during an interview with CNN New Day co-host Alisyn Camerota, March 19, screen image.
…After learning that the state’s stockpile of medical equipment had 16,000 fewer ventilators than New Yorkers would need in a severe pandemic, Gov. Andrew Cuomo came to a fork in the road in 2015. He could have chosen to buy more ventilators. Instead, he asked his health commissioner, Howard Zucker to assemble a task force and draft rules for rationing the ventilators they already had.
That task force came up with rules that will be imposed when ventilators run short. Patients assigned a red code will have the highest access, and other patients will be assigned green, yellow or blue (the worst) depending on a “triage officer’s” decision. In truth, a death officer. Let’s not sugarcoat it. It won’t be up to your own doctor.
Cuomo could have purchased the additional 16,000 needed ventilators for $36,000 apiece or a total of $576 million in 2015. It’s a lot of money but less than the $750 million he threw away on a boondoggle “Buffalo Billion” solar panel factory. When it comes to state budget priorities, spending half a percent of the budget on ventilators is a no brainer.
Now the pandemic is actually here. Cuomo’s grim reaper rules will be applied. New York City’s deputy commissioner for disease control Demetre Daskalakis is anticipating “some very serious difficult decisions.” So far, in New York City, 1 out of every 4 people with a confirmed case has been hospitalized, and 44% of them have needed a ventilator.
The task force claimed there was no point in buying ventilators because there’s also a shortage of doctors and nurses trained to use them. Five years ago, that problem could have been fixed, too. Even now, the National Disaster Medical System can send staff to hot spots like New York…
End excerpt. Please read the entire Betsy McCaughey article at this link.