He is leading 14 New York lawmakers in pushing legislation to repeal the language вЂ“ and some of them assert that the immunity provisions are linked to higher death rates in nursing homes. If we had not done this, these volunteers wouldnвЂ™t have been accepted and we never would have had enough frontline healthcare workers.вЂќ New York is an outlier and has the most explicit and sweeping immunity language Nina KohnДemocratic assemblyman Ron Kim said that вЂњthe language of the bill and the entire proposal was drafted, submitted, and negotiated into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo and his staffвЂќ. вЂњThese volunteers are good samaritans and what was passed by 111 members of the legislature was an expansion of the existing Good Samaritan Law to apply to the emergency that coronavirus created. вЂњThis pandemic remains an unprecedented public health crisis and we had to realign New YorkвЂ™s entire healthcare system, using every type of facility to prepare for the surge, and recruiting more than 96,000 volunteers вЂ“ 25,000 from out of state, to help fight this virus,вЂќ said CuomoвЂ™s senior adviser Rich Azzopardi in an emailed statement. вЂњNew York is an outlier and has the most explicit and sweeping immunity language,вЂќ Kohn said.Д¬uomoвЂ™s administration said the new immunity provision вЂ“ which is a narrow version of a broader proposal championed by the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell вЂ“ is necessary. New York is now one of just two states to shield those corporate officials from both civil lawsuits and some forms of criminal prosecution by the government, according to an analysis by Syracuse University law professor Nina Kohn and the University of HoustonвЂ™s Jessica L Roberts. But the carefully sculpted passage buried in the stateвЂ™s annual spending bill expanded that by offering extensive immunity to any вЂњhealthcare facility administrator, executive, supervisor, board member, trustee or other person responsible for directing, supervising or managing a healthcare facility and its personnel or other individual in a comparable roleвЂќ. Prior to the budget language, Cuomo had already temporarily granted limited legal immunity to doctors and nurses serving on the medical frontlines. The new law declares that top officials at hospital and nursing home companies вЂњshall have immunity from any liability, civil or criminal, for any harm or damages alleged to have been sustained as a result of an act or omission in the course of arranging for or providing healthcare servicesвЂќ to address the Covid-19 outbreak. GNYHA вЂ“ a lobbying group for hospital systems, including some that own nursing homes вЂ“ said it вЂњdrafted and aggressively advocated forвЂќ the immunity provision. Amid allegations of undercounted casualties, the governor also pushed back against pressure to have state regulators more stringently record and report death rates in nursing homes.ДЄnd then came CuomoвЂ™s annual budget вЂ“ which included a little-noticed passage shielding corporate officials who run New York hospitals, nursing homes and other healthcare facilities from liability for Covid-related deaths and injuries. In March, CuomoвЂ™s administration issued an order that allowed nursing homes to readmit sick patients without testing them for Covid-19. Those deaths have occurred as CuomoвЂ™s critics say he has taken a hands-off approach to regulating the healthcare industry interests that helped bankroll his election campaign. New York has become one of the globeвЂ™s major pandemic hotspots вЂ“ and the center of the stateвЂ™s outbreak has been nursing homes, where more than 5,000 New Yorkers have died, according to Associated Press data. As those critics now try to repeal the provision during this final week of AlbanyвЂ™s legislative session, they assert that data prove such immunity is correlating to higher nursing home death rates during the pandemic вЂ“ both in New York and in other states enacting similar immunity policies.

Critics say Cuomo removed a key deterrent against nursing home and hospital corporations cutting corners in ways that jeopardize lives.

Andrew york home pdf