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panicked about COVID-19, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did not.Over the weekend, Democrat Cuomo announced that nursing homes would no longer have to accept patients discharged from hospitals who were COVID-19 positive. Which leads to a question: Why in the world were they required to do so before?
The reason was that Cuomo was panicked about hospitals being overrun. So to clear beds, he told nursing homes that they had to take the elderly, whether or not they had COVID-19.
| To be precise, the [NY State] health department’s order read that nursing homes "are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission." |
New York’s March 25 directive was immediately condemned by the American Health Care Association, the Society for Post-Acute Long-Term Care Medicine and the National Center for Assisted Living, who issued a joint statement calling it "a short-term and short-sighted solution that will only add to the surge in COVID-19 patients that require hospital care."
New York wasn’t the only state to issue such orders. Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, did, but then quickly reversed itself. Pennsylvania did, too. More than 2,300 nursing home residents have died in the Keystone State — accounting for 70% of the its total deaths, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
New Jersey followed New York’s lead, with Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli issuing an edict on March 31, declaring that: "No patient/resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the post-acute care setting solely based on a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 ... Post-acute care facilities are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized patient/resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission."