New: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) covered up the scale of COVID-related nursing home deaths.

His counterpart in New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy (D), tried to learn from his mistakes.

I looked at what the neighboring governors did differently:
huffpost.com/entry/andrew-c…
-- Nursing home medical professionals and advocates for residents felt that they had an audience with Gov. Murphy's team.

Not so in New York.

“It was like talking to a wall. We told them to give [our members] a call. And we got nothing,” @PALTC_Chris.
-- On paper at least, this insight translated into smarter policy.

New Jersey took a more lenient approach toward nursing homes, offering help adhering to COVID guidelines. The state did not explicitly forbid turning away COVID-positive hospital patients.
“Pretty clearly, the New York approach was the worse of the two,” said @gusmano_mk. ImageImage
-- New Jersey also passed a law shielding health care providers from legal liability for alleged damages incurred while administering care in the pandemic.

But critically, unlike New York, the state did not suspend medical record-keeping requirements. ImageImage
-- NJ's nursing home situation was still tragic and messy.

The biggest contrast came in the two governors' respective responses to blowback from critics.

Cuomo tried to shut down critics with obfuscation.

Murphy commissioned an audit and moved to adopt reforms right away. ImageImageImage
The Trump DOJ went after the Democratic governors of NJ, NY, Pa. and Mich. As @ryanjreilly reported at the time, it was a political move: huffpost.com/entry/coronavi…

But only Cuomo appears to have used it as an excuse to continue hiding nursing-home death data from state lawmakers.
“Though the timing of inquiries in the months before the election raised red flags about their political nature, we took it seriously. We responded appropriately, and continued to report data in an accurate and timely manner," Murphy administration official.
Pa. government told me they always counted the deaths of nursing-home residents who died in hospitals toward the total of nursing home deaths. (So did California, which wasn't targeted by the DOJ.) Image
“If the DOJ inquiry comes and your answer is, ‘We didn’t know what numbers we were going to give them and also give you [the lawmakers],’ that’s not OK," @Biaggi4NY (@SenatorBiaggi) ...
... “It’s so clear that what they were trying to do was report lower numbers for not only their image but also so that they would evade a DOJ investigation. What?! That’s crazy.”
Stay on the lookout for a more aggressive state legislature as the drafting of New York's budget takes shape over the next few weeks.

“The governor is not in a position of strength,” @JuliaCarmel__ said. Image
From the cutting-room floor: @LTCconsumer's Richard Mollot told me Cuomo is worst NY governor on nursing-home issues since Mollot took over the group in 2002.

"Pataki was really terrible on these issues, but I think, frankly, the Pataki administration -- they were better."
.@TimBalk and @SlatteryNYDN did great work documenting how the hospital and nursing-home industries filled Cuomo's campaign coffers when he was drafting the budget that shielded them from liability: nydailynews.com/news/politics/… ImageImage
Tim and Denis may have just scratched the surface though, because plenty of financiers with major health care investments are also big Cuomo donors and their analysis just looked at direct health care industry donations ...
... For example, I found that Larry Robbins, founder of Glenview Capital Management, which bought Brookdale Senior Living in 2019 (prnewswire.com/news-releases/…), contributed almost $70k to Cuomo this past July.

A look at Glenview's other investments: fintel.io/i/glenview-cap… Image
Glenview, a hedge fund, initially lost a lot of money on its traditional health care investments during the pandemic, such as Bausch pharmaceuticals: reuters.com/article/us-hed…

That stock has since bounced back. Image
Brookdale's stock has also bounced back.

But would the latter be true if the threat of lawsuits were hanging over it?

Brookdale has 21 facilities in New York state: brookdale.com/en/locations/n… Image
One other item: At the height of the pandemic, Murphy made a decision to play ball with Trump in the hopes of getting better treatment for NJ. Cuomo never did.

politico.com/states/new-jer… Image
Finally, this article could have been more even-handed if Cuomo's press team had gotten back to me.

Genuine bummer.

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More from @danielmarans

5 Mar
At a @USJewishDems forum for Ohio-11 special election, each candidate was asked whether they support BDS.

@ninaturner: "No, I personally do not, but I also do not support the criminalization of people who are peacefully organizing for political change."
This is, to my knowledge, the first time Turner has clarified her position on BDS.

She supports tougher conditions on U.S. aid to Israel. Anti-BDS, pro-conditions is the stance Bowman took in NY-16 and it is already quite bold in a very Jewish seat: jewishinsider.com/2021/02/ohio-s…
Also interesting choice of tone and emphasis in Turner's climate answer: She talks about "kicking our addiction to fossil fuels," a "just transition" for fossil-fuel workers and "eradicating" environmental racism ...
Read 4 tweets
22 Dec 20
New: Progressive Democrats have pushed for reforms based on Edward Snowden's leaks, but they have been relatively silent amid a campaign to get President Trump to pardon him. huffpost.com/entry/democrat… via @HuffPostPol
Very unlikely Trump will do it, but advocates think it is the best window they may ever have.

He said in August that he is considering it: reuters.com/article/us-usa…

Why this is a story: Progressive Dems have been at the forefront of efforts to end or curtail the mass surveillance programs Snowden uncovered.

But while 3 Republicans and Amash have called for a pardon, just @TulsiGabbard has on Dem side.
Read 13 tweets
22 Dec 20
A lot of the post-election debate over the direction of the Democratic Party has been between the "center-left" and the "left" ...
... But there is also a more obscure, though fervent and important debate between what is sometimes called the paleo-left or conversely, "post-left," and both the neoliberal center and the intersectional, activist left embodied by the Squad ...
... Figures on the "post left" -- or traditional, Marxist or labor-oriented left -- believe that the intersectional left has become too focused on cultural movements and symbolic causes that lack a mass, working-class constituency ...
Read 10 tweets
20 Dec 20
John McCain said the exact same thing in 2014 as part of a media blitz designed to pressure Obama into intervening more directly in Ukraine. Obama more or less didn't bite, refusing the Ukrainians lethal aid until the very end. politico.com/story/2014/03/… Image
Incidentally, when Romney called Russia the United States' biggest threat in 2012 it was also cause for mockery: washingtonpost.com/news/fact-chec… Image
The facts about U.S.-Russia relations have since changed, but some of the fundamental questions about how to preserve peace in a world dominated by a handful of nuclear-armed nations remain roughly the same.
Read 5 tweets
11 Dec 20
Ah yes, trying to score political points on a congresswoman frivolously accused of anti-semitism by ... mocking her Hanukkah greeting?
This is to say nothing of the merits of this historical parallel which are questionable. They were restoring Jewish sovereignty in response to religious repression imposed by an imperial power.
And as @NickBaumann and I noted in this deep dive, Hannukkah was a Jewish civil war and the rabbis of the Talmud downplayed the militaristic component of Hanukkah for a host of political reasons: huffpost.com/entry/real-his…
Read 5 tweets
10 Dec 20
My one critique of the excellent @JaneMayerNYer report on Feinstein's decline is that she is a little too soft on Democrats for not nudging her out in 2018 ... newyorker.com/news/news-desk…
... Sure, Feinstein may have insisted on running again, but it was Democrats' choice to rally to her side against @kdeleon, an accomplished legislator and the son of Guatemalan immigrants.
This was Exhibit 1,783 in how the Democratic establishment selectively uses racial representation when it suits its interests.

Other examples include backing Cuomo over Nixon and Rahm over Chuy Garcia.
Read 8 tweets

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