Keep this in mind next time Gov Cuomo complains about lack of respirators and beds.
In 2015 he was informed that the State had only 2000 respirators on hand when the recommended level ( in the event if a pandemic) was 16000. Instead of buying them, he instead asked his Health Commissioner, Howard Zucker, to create a protocol to in effect determine who shall ( live ) get one and who shall ( die ) not get one.
At the same time he created the Medicaid Redesign Team. Its purpose included saving money by closing/reducing hospitals with too many empty beds ( i.e Long Beach Med Ctr, Long Island College Hospital, St Vincent’s). It’s hard to criticize this because it’s very expensive to staff empty beds because you might have a pandemic
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