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Cuomo's scandals continue to haunt: $453M wasted on harmful medical devices, elderly abandoned, accountability nowhere in sight
By ljdevon // 2025-04-14
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  • Former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration spent $453 million on 247,343 medical devices, but only used three pieces during the COVID-19 scandal.
  • The state's ventilator mandate and totalitarian protocols ultimately harmed countless patients who were not given the proper treatments.
  • A state audit revealed over 90% of critical equipment has gone unmaintained, risking future emergencies due to expired warranties and degradation.
  • Nursing homes were forced to overcrowd with Covid-positive patients, while Cuomo’s team systematically hid death counts for five months, fueling a humanitarian crisis.
  • New York now faces a $5M bill to McKinsey consultants for pandemic procurement advice, despite their projection error.
  • Governments should not practice medicine, engage in bio-terror, nor facilitate medical device mandates.

Audit reveals Cuomo’s reckless spending, failed oversight left devices to rot

The fallout from former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s pandemic policies continues to unravel, exposing a catastrophic blend of financial waste, systemic neglect, and moral failure that left nursing homes desolate and taxpayers drowning in debt. An audit from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli paints a damning picture: Cuomo’s administration panicked-buying medical equipment at record pace, procuring 247,343 devices at a cost of 453 million, yet only three items were deployed. The rest now languish in storage, decaying and accruing additional costs. All the wasted equipment makes one wonder if there was a pandemic in the first place, or if people's lives were lost due to government mismanagement, harmful protocols and mandates, and due to hospital systems that misdiagnosed patients and failed to treat patients properly. Furthermore, the deliberate suppression of nursing home death totals — a scandal that prompted Cuomo’s 2021 resignation — hints at a broader pattern of deception. Senior aides knowingly blocked transparency, subverting public health integrity to protect the governor’s optics, as hospitals were ordered to funnel Covid-positive patients into facilities desperate for staff and protocols.

The dark legacy of Cuomo’s nursing home scandal

Cuomo’s mandates turned nursing homes into death traps. A 2021 investigation found his policies forced facilities to accept high-risk discharges from hospitals, overcrowding locations with less-than-10% of ICU-grade beds by 2020. Meanwhile, Cuomo’s spokesperson Rich Azzopardi recently shrugged off McKinsey’s $5M consulting fiasco — which overestimated equipment needs — as “Monday-morning quarterbacking.” Historically, Cuomo’s record of institutional manipulation stretches back to his 2009 tenure as U.S. Health Secretary, where he championed federal nurse staffing cuts, per documents leaked in 2022. The 2020 nursing home deaths, numbering over 14,000 per state reports, were omitted from public stats for five months, mirroring his 2011 “living conditions” scandal, where state buildings’ maintenance failures drew federal scrutiny.

Irresponsibility and recklessness at institutional levels

The latest audit underscores how fear-fueled decision-making erodes fiscal discipline and ethics. Of the medical devices purchased, DiNapoli’s team found no documentation justifying why 200,000 items were stockpiled. Even more gravely, 90% of equipment requiring maintenance is overdue, rendering it “junk” pending an emergency — a stark contrast to Cuomo’s 2020 speeches, where he declared ventilators would “save thousands of lives.” Empire Center expert Bill Hammond equates this to a “museum of broken relics…we’re paying to mothball,” highlighting systemic failure to engage hospitals in redistribution. State data showed 24,585 devices were requested by facilities during the COVID-19 scandal, but only a fraction were sent. Cuomo’s current mayoral campaign doubles down on the same rhetoric: blaming “incompetent leadership” while ignoring his role in a system now valued more for its empty warehouses than its care. “When will accountability mean answerability, not just audits?” asks retired nurse Maria Soto, whose elderly father died in a Cuomo-era nursing home. Four years post-pandemic, New York’s shame lies not just in financial overreach, but in the human cost of a leader who treated public health like a political prop. Cuomo’s mismanagement — $453 million wasted, 14,000+ lives erased from records, a Healthcare System reduced to a storage jail for unused ventilators — exposes a cycle of corruption prioritizing power over people. As he campaigns to lead NYC, Cuomo remains unrepentant. But as DiNapoli’s report puts it: “The excuse isn’t preparedness — it’s the absence of planning.” Cuomo's stockpile of ventilators is a haunting reminder that government should not be practicing medicine or facilitating medical device businesses to capitalize on terrors. When will leaders learn that panic and secrecy cost lives, and voters remember the wreckage? Sources include: Zerohedge.com OSC.NY.gov NYPost.com PBS.org
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