© Reuters/Mike BlakeCalifornian healthcare workers protesting for safer working conditions
Republicans in the Senate have all but plagiarized a controversial provision from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo that will offer legal immunity to corporations that ran the care homes in which hundreds of thousands of elderly Americans died with the coronavirus over the last six months, according to a trio of progressive journalists who compared the texts and interviewed some of the lobbyists who wrote the polarizing passages for the politicians in their pockets.
When Cuomo's corporate immunity provisions first resurfaced in Senate Republicans' Covid-19 stimulus package in July, some thought it was a fluke. The legislative package protected elder care homes from lawsuits over "resource or staffing shortage" and classed hospital administrators as caregivers for the purpose of that immunity. Cuomo himself criticized the bill, even as journalists noted the similarity of its language to his own legislation.
The bill in question was actually written by the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA), a lobbying group that paid Cuomo over $1 million for the privilege of walling its members off from legal action in the midst of a pandemic that has seen tens of thousands of Americans die in nursing homes across the nation. Careful to cover all its bases, the GNYHA also spread over a quarter of a million dollars among Democratic legislative committees, ensuring the provision would be passed.
Comment: Immunity for Senate Democrats was worth $2M in payoff irrespective of the consequences to care facilities, human tally or sworn duty to the charge it de-serves.