16 October 2023: Continuing Probes Into Cuomo's Nursing Home Deaths Scandals

Q&A: Ron Kim’s latest update on nursing home deaths investigation

NY Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens) has been almost alone in pursuing consequences for the aftermath of Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive and the impact it had on nursing homes throughout the state of New York. In this interview with City & State's Austin C. Jefferson, he gave the following answers to questions about the U.S. House's probe of the excess deaths that resulted and of his own probe into them:

What did you think of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic signaling that it might subpoena former Gov. Andrew Cuomo over the nursing home deaths?

There has to be accountability. I’ve always said that. Resignation doesn’t equal accountability, and executive leaders that made unilateral decisions, regardless of whether it was with the best intent or not. If the outcome was bad and especially when it involves something unique like this that is linked to a multimillion-dollar book deal and a motive to hide, he shouldn’t have pulled data and information from lawmakers and the public. We need to shed as much light (as possible) so we don’t repeat the same mistake in the future.

Speaking of shedding more light, how is your investigation into the nursing home deaths progressing?

Yeah, we’re fully working with the subcommittee at the federal level. I know that they’ve already had a hearing on the COVID response, and I think they’ll continue to investigate this matter. I’m looking forward to the new administration fulfilling their word that there will be a thorough investigation.

I look forward to making sure that they can produce an independent report and our new chair of the Health Committee is also committed to doing a thorough investigative hearing as well, and that’s something that I’m brokering as we speak with the families and the new chair of the Health Committee to see what we can do going into the new session and providing more transparency into what happened.

What do you think that report might say?

We want to get as much of the unbiased, independent input centered around the families and the workers on the ground that saw the truth. None of the hearings really reflected on what really happened on the ground versus what we heard through the skewed data that we received in the back end.

I think once we do a thorough report, we will see the disconnect in terms of what was reported and the narrative that they tried to control versus what we saw on the ground, which is a total neglect of the most vulnerable population at a time when everyone should have been hands-on in protecting and figuring out a solution to isolate and giving these individuals and giving their families the option to take them home.

Oh, and none of them were properly administered during that period. I think the report will indicate a system that sorely lacks the public administrative capacity to take care of older adults in emergency times, and it will call for a rebuilding of public ability to take care of our most vulnerable population.

This entry for the timeline was posted on 21 October 2023.