It’s Not The Federal Government’s Fault New York Doesn’t Have More Ventilators, It’s Andrew Cuomo’s
Cuomo’s CON Laws Are the Problem
Levin later went on to criticize Cuomo, stating, “I watched the governor of New York say we need more beds, and I said, ‘Well, why don’t you go get them?’ Because under these CON laws … the first state to have it was New York in the 1960s. They limit the number of beds for whatever reason, they limit the expansion of facilities and not just that, MRIs, CTs, other devices.”
The United States has
far more critical-care beds per capita than other countries, but CON law regulations are one of the main reasons the United States has fewer overall hospital beds. According to the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, America has 2.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people. This is less than the 3.2 beds per 1,000 people in Italy, as well as the 12.3 beds per 1,000 people in South Korea, which have had serious outbreaks of the virus. Because of CON laws, some U.S. hospitals aren’t allowed to determine how many beds they need and to expand care as they see fit.
In addition to causing a lack of proper equipment, these rules harm patients. According to a
study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, states with CON laws have a 2.5 to 5 percent higher mortality rate than those without. Wait times have also been affected, with the average delay in New York City emergency rooms ranging from seven to 10 hours before the virus outbreak added strain to an already poorly operating medical system.
Yet Cuomo, who blames the federal government for a lack of beds and ventilators in his state, seemingly forgot it was his mismanagement that led to these shortages. According to
RealClearPolitics, “After learning that the state’s stockpile of medical equipment had 16,000 fewer ventilators than New Yorkers would need in a severe pandemic, Gov. Andrew Cuomo came to a fork in the road in 2015. He could have chosen to buy more ventilators. Instead, he asked his health commissioner, Howard Zucker to assemble a task force and draft rules for rationing the ventilators they already had.”
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