Author: Mary Pat Campbell

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo under investigation for nursing home deaths

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/york-gov-andrew-cuomo-investigation-nursing-home-deaths/story?id=75960261

Excerpt:

The full scope of the investigation is not immediately clear, but the sources said there was a particular interest in nursing homes, which have been a source of increasing frustration for Cuomo.

Last week, an aide conceded the administration withheld the nursing home death toll from state lawmakers out of fear it would be used against the state by the Trump administration.

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The controversy over nursing home deaths has dogged Cuomo for months. At the onset of the pandemic, state health officials directed nursing homes to accept residents recovering from the virus as they were discharged from hospitals.

The directive was rescinded several weeks later, but Cuomo faced criticism that it contributed to a high level of deaths in nursing homes. The governor said he based the decision on federal guidance at the time and insisted staff members, not residents discharged from hospitals, brought coronavirus into nursing homes.

Author(s): Aaron Katersky

Publication Date: 17 February 2021

Publication Site: ABC News

FBI, U.S. attorney in Brooklyn probing Cuomo administration on nursing homes

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/cuomo-investigation-fbi-covid-nursing-homes-15957401.php

Excerpt:

The FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn have launched an investigation that is examining, at least in part, the actions of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s coronavirus task force in its handling of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities during the pandemic, the Times Union has learned.

The probe by the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York is apparently in its early stages and is focusing on the work of some of the senior members of the governor’s task force, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter who is not authorized to comment publicly.

Author(s): Brendan J. Lyons

Publication Date: 17 February 2021

Publication Site: Times-Union

Worst Governor In America: Those Nursing Homes Are Just Terrible, Aren’t They?

Mary Pat Campbell
Worst governor in America: Those nursing homes are just terrible, aren’t they?

Excerpt:

I don’t think anyone is suggesting that the nursing homes themselves are without blame. As soon as it became obvious that there were outbreaks of the virus in any senior facility, the administrators should have been moving to set up isolation wards and impose more rigorous disinfecting and screening protocols. Some homes did that while others clearly failed. I will also agree that having a cap of $10,000 per violation of the state’s health codes amounts to a slap on the wrist and doesn’t provide much incentive to do better.

With all of that said, however, Cuomo’s team is still completely ignoring the elephant in the room. There were nursing homes in New York at the start of the pandemic that were trying to refuse reentry to residents who tested positive for the novel coronavirus. It was Andrew Cuomo, acting under the extraordinary executive emergency powers granted to him by the state legisature that ordered all of the homes to accept returning residents and forbade them from requiring a negative COVID test as part of the process.

Cuomo also threatened non-compliant nursing homes with crippling fines or the loss of their license to operate. So while some of the nursing homes were clearly failing to take all possible precautions, even the ones who were trying to do the right thing were forbidden from doing so. There is one and only one person responsible for the subsequent deaths in those homes and that’s the person who picked up his pen and issued the orders.

Author(s): Jazz Shaw

Publication Date: 16 February 2021

Publication Site: Hot Air

Cuomo administration’s handling of nursing home deaths calls for serious investigation

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/17/opinions/cuomo-covid-nursing-home-deaths-rodgers/index.html

Excerpt:

Late last month, New York State Attorney General Letitia James issued a scathing report about how nursing homes in the state handled Covid-19, including a finding that the state’s Department of Health undercounted Covid deaths at nursing homes by approximately 50%. While the discrepancy didn’t change the overall number of New York Covid-19 deaths, it attributed deaths where a nursing home resident had been transferred to a hospital for treatment to the hospital instead of the nursing home.

This undercount (a term New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker has pushed back on) downplayed the high rates of transmission at nursing homes, at a time when the state mandated that nursing homes re-admit patients with Covid-19 who had been receiving treatment in a hospital, a policy that was reversed a couple of months later. (Cuomo has long said the decision to send recovering Covid-19 patients back to nursing homes was based on federal guidance to do so.)

Last year both the US Department of Justice and New York State legislators issued requests for information about nursing home Covid statistics in New York State, but the Cuomo administration, according to a recent admission by a top Cuomo aide, delayed the release of the figures out of concern about a possible politically motivated federal investigation.

Author(s): Jennifer Rodgers

Publication Date: 17 February 2021

Publication Site: CNN

Cuomo-gate: A Nixonian Scandal Is Engulfing New York

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.dailyposter.com/p/cuomo-gate-a-nixonian-scandal-is

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Excerpt:

The Daily Poster had been covering the story for months before it exploded this week. The scandal is a cautionary tale of hubris, megalomania, and corruption that left a literal mountain of preventable COVID deaths in its wake. Now we are about to see whether a blue state’s democratic institutions can hold wrongdoers accountable, or whether America’s culture of impunity can once again protect the powerful from facing any consequences at all.

…..

Two national news outlets today detailed Cuomo’s new campaign of retribution against one lawmaker in his own party who dared to ask questions about constituents and family members who died under Cuomo’s nursing home policies. Cuomo held a press conference to publicly berate the same Democrat, while another New York news outlet reported that other lawmakers are now facing threats.  

….

Cuomo’s political machine received more than $2 million from the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA), its executives, and its lobbying firms. The health care industry group also funneled more than $450,000 to members of the New York legislature in 2020. 

Author(s): David Sirota

Publication Date: 17 February 2021

Publication Site: Daily Poster

Ranking of COVID-19 among the leading causes of mortality this week, assuming uniform deaths of non-COVID causes throughout the year

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:share:6768145136149913600/

Graphic:

Excerpt:

1 – COVID-19 2,728
2 – Ischemic heart disease 1,945
3 – Stroke 1,294
4 – Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias 938
5- Tracheal, bronchus, and lung cancer 711
6 – Hypertensive heart disease 542
7 – Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease 540
8 – Colon and rectum cancer 478
9 – Diabetes mellitus 415
10 – Chronic kidney disease 318

Author(s): Federica Gazzelloni

Publication Date: 18 February 2021

Publication Site: LinkedIn

U.S. Life Expectancy Fell in First Half of 2020 as Covid-19 Deaths Surged

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-life-expectancy-fell-in-first-half-of-2020-as-covid-19-deaths-surged-11613624460

Graphic:

Excerpt:

U.S. life expectancy declined by a year during the first half of 2020, according to federal figures released Thursday that show the deadly impact of the coronavirus pandemic’s early months.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics said life expectancy at birth was 77.8 years as of the end of June based on provisional estimates. The one-year decline from the previous year was the largest drop since World War II, when life expectancy fell 2.9 years between 1942 and 1943. It put life expectancy at its lowest level in the U.S. since 2006.

“It’s very concerning when we see mortality increase to such a degree,” said Elizabeth Arias, a health scientist at the center and a co-author of the report. “It gives you a clear picture of the magnitude of the effect of the Covid pandemic.”

Author(s): Janet Adamy

Publication Date: 18 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Charging patients just $10 more for medications leads to more deaths

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22276166/us-health-insurance-out-of-pocket-costs-research

Excerpt:

Researchers at Harvard University and the University of California Berkeley examined what happened when Medicare beneficiaries faced an increase in their out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs. They found that a 34 percent increase (a $10.40 increase per drug) led to a significant decrease in patients filling their prescriptions — and, eventually, a 33 percent increase in mortality.

The rise in deaths resulted from people indiscriminately cutting back on medications when they had to pay more for them, including drugs for heart disease, hypertension, asthma, and diabetes.

….

It is difficult to come up with a study design that directly measures the effect of health insurance on health outcomes. These researchers overcame that problem by tracking the prescription benefits for people newly enrolling in Medicare when they turn 65. People with birthdays earlier in the year would be more likely to face higher out-of-pocket costs than people with birthdays later in the year, given the way Medicare’s benefits are designed. By comparing the data between the different age groups, using as a baseline an estimate of how much the patients would have been expected to spend without any cost-sharing, the researchers were able to isolate the effect of cost-sharing on the use of prescription drugs and mortality rates for patients.

Author(s): Dylan Scott

Publication Date: 10 February 2021

Publication Site: Vox

Five Charts You’ve Never Used but Should

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://policyviz.com/2021/02/08/five-charts-youve-never-used-but-should/

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Excerpt:

We are not born knowing instinctively how to read a bar chart or line chart or pie chart. Most of us learn those basic chart types in grade school. But there is a vast array of graphic types available that can effectively communicate your work to your audience.

In my new book, Better Data Visualizations: A Guide for Scholars, Researchers, and Wonks, I survey more than eighty visualization types, everything from histograms to horizon charts, ridgeline plots to choropleth maps, and explain how each has its place in the visual toolkit.

To get you started, here are five graphs that perhaps you’ve never used before but that you should consider. They either do a better job showing certain types of data or they are more engaging and interesting than basic chart types.

Author(s): Jonathan Schwabish

Publication Date: 8 February 2021

Publication Site: PolicyViz

Covid Housing Boom Is Even Bigger Than Imagined

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-17/covid-housing-boom-is-even-bigger-than-imagined

Graphic:

Excerpt:

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Wednesday released its quarterly report on household debt and credit for the final three months of 2020, with its strategists and statisticians deciding to dig deeper into mortgage originations, the types of homebuyers during the Covid-19 pandemic and to what extent Americans are taking out cash against their home equity. While much of what they found confirms many of the narratives about the housing market, it’s the sheer magnitude of the move that’s breathtaking and puts into context where the economy stands almost one year after the coronavirus crisis began in the U.S.

At the highest level, mortgage originations reached almost $1.2 trillion in the final three months of 2020, the highest quarterly volume in the history of the New York Fed’s data, which begins in 2000. Americans refinanced more mortgage debt last year than any time since 2003, while mortgages taken out to purchase a home surged to the highest since 2006. First-time buyers took on more debt than at any time in history, while mortgages for repeat buyers and those looking for a second home or an investment property reached the highest in more than a decade.

Meanwhile, home prices soared across the U.S., with the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index jumping 9.5% in November, the most since 2014 (December’s figures will be released next week). This surge led to “a notable increase in cashout refinance volumes, which spiked in the fourth quarter of 2020 and show no sign of abating,” the New York Fed researchers said in a blog post. Collectively, homeowners withdrew $182 billion in home equity in 2020, or an average of about $27,000 for each household. Even those who chose not to take out extra cash saved an average of $200 a month on their mortgage payments.

Author(s): Brian Chappatta

Publication Date: 17 February 2021

Publication Site: Bloomberg

The problem with going big on stimulus, as Biden is

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.startribune.com/the-problem-with-going-big-on-stimulus-as-biden-is/600021428/

Excerpt:

First, wise public sector investments are better for the poor than one-time wealth transfers. The U.S. is still reaping the benefits of the great public health and public works achievements of the 20th century. Second, the most enduring and beneficial government-transfer programs, such as Social Security, have been built on sustainable majorities.

…..

It’s not as if there aren’t obvious candidates for alternative investment: green energy, broadband and public health infrastructure for the next pandemic, to name a few. Yes, I am familiar with the argument that spending the extra trillion or so now will make it possible to spend more trillions later, including on such policies. But whatever kind of complicated political story you might tell, the basic laws of economics have not been repealed. Increasing current expenditures does, in fact, involve foregone future opportunities.

Author(s): Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg Opinion

Publication Date: 10 February 2021

Publication Site: Star Tribune

SEC Charges Ratings Agency With Disclosure And Internal Controls Failures Relating To Undisclosed Model Adjustments

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2021-29

Excerpt:

he Securities and Exchange Commission today filed a civil action alleging that former credit ratings agency Morningstar Credit Ratings LLC  violated disclosure and internal controls provisions of the federal securities laws in rating commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS).

Credit ratings are used by market participants to help evaluate credit risk, price certain securities, and guide the investment decisions of individuals and institutional investors alike.  To promote transparency in the process, the federal securities laws require credit rating agencies to publicly and accurately describe the procedures and methodologies used to determine credit ratings, and to implement effective internal controls to ensure that they follow those procedures and methodologies. 

According to the complaint, in 30 CMBS transactions totaling $30 billion that Morningstar rated from 2015 to 2016, the credit rating agency permitted analysts to make undisclosed adjustments to key stresses in the model that it used in determining the rating for that transaction.  The complaint also alleges that Morningstar failed to establish and enforce an effective internal control structure governing the adjustments for a total of 31 transactions.

Additional link: https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2021/comp-pr2021-29.pdf

Publication Date: 16 February 2021

Publication Site: SEC