{"id":1530105,"date":"2025-04-13T13:55:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-13T17:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1530105"},"modified":"2025-04-13T13:55:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-13T17:55:00","slug":"audit-cuomo-spent-453m-on-247343-medical-devices-for-covid-state-used-only-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/audit-cuomo-spent-453m-on-247343-medical-devices-for-covid-state-used-only-3\/1530105\/","title":{"rendered":"Audit: Cuomo Spent $453M On 247,343 Medical Devices For COVID… State Used Only 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audit: Cuomo Spent $453M On 247,343 Medical Devices For COVID… State Used Only 3<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s handling of the Covid crisis wasn’t just a health catastrophe, but a financial one too, according to a damning new audit report released Friday. The state government poured $453 million into building an enormous stockpile of medical equipment — and only used 0.000012% of it<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to state comptroller Tom DiNapoli, New York bought a staggering\u00a0247,343 medical devices<\/strong>, but only wound up using a laughable three pieces<\/strong> of equipment<\/strong> out of the vast horde. Worse, the waste was only compounded by the state’s utter neglect of its fiduciary duties to taxpayers. Rather than finding buyers for the once-valuable assets, bureaucrats have been content to let the equipment age and decay in warehouses<\/strong>. As if the erosion of the stockpiles weren’t bad enough, New York is also wasting money on storage costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York state bought hundreds of millions of dollars\u2019 worth of medical equipment at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, including ventilators and x-ray machines, that now sits unused in storage facilities across the state, missing recommended maintenance and costing taxpayers storage expenses,\u201d said<\/a> Napoli’s office. Of the equipment that requires ongoing maintenance, auditors found that 90% of it is past due<\/strong>, with no process or contract in place to handle that need. Failure to keep up with maintenance risks voiding manufacturer warranties, and also rendering the equipment unusable in an emergency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then-Gov Cuomo with comedian Chris Rock and actress Rosie Perez at a 2020 event where Cuomo promoted masks as “amazingly” effective at slowing the spread of Covid. They weren’t<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong>(Spencer Platt\/Getty Images via NPR<\/em><\/a>)<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cIt was completely understandable that we did a lot of panic buying in the moment. But then to throw all this stuff in a warehouse and neglect and ignore it \u2014 it\u2019s compounding the mistake<\/a>,” Bill Hammond of the Empire Center think tank told Politico<\/em>.\u00a0Four years ago, the Department of Health created a “Medical Stockpile Steering Committee” to determine how much of the equipment should be retained. The group said 51,140, but there was no plan for the other 200,000 devices. The DOH couldn’t produce any documentation<\/a> about how the committee reached its conclusions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Heading into the pandemic, the state had 4,800 pieces of equipment on standby, but now has a quarter million<\/strong> items five years after Covid-19 entered the country. The inventory includes CPAP\/BiPAP machines, ventilators, oxygen tanks, pulse oximeters, oxygen concentrators and infusion pumps In addition to the money wasted on the equipment itself, Cuomo’s administration also paid McKinsey & Company consultants more than $5 million<\/a> to advise them how much stuff to buy.<\/p>\n

In the understatement of the year, Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi told the New York Post<\/em> that McKinsey overestimated the need.\u00a0\u201cYou can Monday-morning quarterback now, but then we were looking to save lives and doing nothing wasn\u2019t an option.\u201d Alas, Cuomo’s record on “saving lives” is arguably worse<\/strong> than the emerging picture of his financial mismanagement of the pandemic. His administration was widely condemned for ordering nursing homes to accept Covid-positive patients who were discharging from hospitals, then accused of deliberately understating the number of long-term-care-resident deaths<\/strong> that followed.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udea8#BREAKING<\/a>: New York Governor. Cuomo has RESIGNED. pic.twitter.com\/qAPVH5wiNd<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) August 10, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n

The faultfinding report comes just weeks after 67-year-old Cuomo announced his candidacy for New York City mayor, <\/strong> by many of our political leaders.”\u00a0He resigned his governorship in August 2021 after at least 11 women filed various complaints of unwelcome sexual advances against him — from kisses to groping to comments. The state legislature had been closing in on impeaching him.\u00a0When he announced his bid for the mayor’s office last month, Cuomo\u00a0blamed the city’s problems on “the lack of intelligent action<\/a>. Friday’s report will do little to assure voters that he packs the requisite IQ.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nSun, 04\/13\/2025 – 09:55<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/covid-19\/audit-cuomo-spent-453m-247343-medical-devices-covid-state-used-only-3<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Audit: Cuomo Spent $453M On 247,343 Medical Devices For COVID… State Used Only 3 Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s handling of the Covid crisis…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1530106,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1530105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1530105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1530106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1530105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1530105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1530105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}