Ranking Member Ruiz’s Opening Statement at Select Subcommittee Hearing with Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

Washington, D.C. (September 10, 2024)—Below is Ranking Member Raul Ruiz’s, M.D. opening statement at today’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing with former Governor Andrew Cuomo.   

Opening Statement
Ranking Member Raul Ruiz, M.D.
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic
Hearing with Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
September 10, 2024
 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me begin by taking a moment to acknowledge the seniors that our nation has lost to COVID-19, as well as the grief of the families who lost parents and grandparents during the pandemic.

Each and every life taken by the virus is a tragedy, and I am sorry for your loss.

With four years having passed since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us have become numb to the grave uncertainty that we faced in 2020.

That spring, as a novel virus took hold across our nation, hospitals overflowed with patients as hundreds and eventually thousands of Americans died each day.

Frontline health care workers were forced to wear garbage bags as gowns, and life as we knew it had come to a total halt.

Things were in absolute chaos.

And in the midst of that chaos, public officials at every level of government were left to make challenging decisions in real time with constantly evolving information and extremely limited resources.

Now—with the darkest days of the pandemic behind us thanks to the Biden-Harris Administration’s historic work getting vaccines in arms, safely reopening schools and businesses, and jumpstarting our economy—we have the opportunity to look back on those decisions and learn from them.

And in doing so, we can acknowledge that in future public health crises, we would make certain decisions differently.

One such case is policies that arguably required the readmission of COVID-19 patients back into nursing homes without infection prevention and control in an early effort to relieve hospital strain.

In hindsight, knowing now what we do about how COVID-19 spreads—including through aerosolized droplets and by asymptomatic carriers—these policies were a misstep, and they are something we can learn from as we look to better prepare for future pandemics.

However, we must be comprehensive in our examination of where things went right and where things went wrong in responding to COVID-19.

And we would be doing our nation’s seniors and nursing home residents a disservice by not taking a hard and honest look at the data that has emerged from that period.

This data shows us that the driving force behind the infections and fatalities that occurred in our nation’s nursing homes was broader community spread, which led to dedicated staff inadvertently bringing the virus into these vulnerable settings.

And as we look back on policy missteps that put our nation’s seniors at risk, I would be remiss if I did not mention that the issue of community spread is one that was severely exacerbated by the severe shortages of PPE and tests that our nation experienced at the hand of former President Trump and his Administration’s early blunders.

These failures hampered our efforts to get a handle on the outbreak of COVID-19 and left states to fend for themselves when it came to obtaining critically needed supplies to protect our most vulnerable.

As Ranking Member, I have championed objectivity and called for the Select Subcommittee to put people over politics.

And in that vein, I want to make something abundantly clear.

Any public official who sought to obscure transparency or mislead the American people during the COVID-19 pandemic should answer to the American public—regardless of political party.

That is why the former Governor and members of his administration faced serious questions from both sides of the aisle about allegations that they misrepresented nursing home fatality data to evade public scrutiny during the closed-door transcribed interviews that led up to this hearing.

It is also why I have been so forceful in my condemnation of the former President and his reckless efforts to downplay the threat of COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic.

The American people deserve honesty, transparency, and integrity from their public officials—full stop.

At the same time, I continue to believe that the greatest thing we can do for the American people is contribute to the forward-looking work of preventing and preparing for future pandemics.

That is why today, I am leading Select Subcommittee Democrats in announcing new legislation to strengthen infection control and prevention efforts in our nation’s nursing homes.

This forward-looking legislation makes new, robust investments in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Survey and Certification efforts, which uncover incidents of poor or substandard care—including risks of infection—that put residents at risk.

It also reforms CMS’s Survey and Certification efforts to ensure that comprehensive, sustained funding continues to be available for these crucial oversight activities.

Our new legislation builds on the Biden-Harris Administration’s legacy of protecting and advancing the health of our nation’s seniors.

Earlier this year, the Administration finalized its long-term care staffing rule, which establishes new federal standards to ensure that our parents and grandparents in nursing homes receive the highest quality care.

And in 2022, President Biden and Vice President Harris took on Big Pharma and signed into law the historic Inflation Reduction Act, which capped the monthly cost of insulin at $35 for seniors and finally allowed Medicare to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices.

One thing is certain: there is still more we can and must do to protect and advance the health of our nation’s seniors.

As we look to strengthen our nation’s preparedness for future pandemics and public health threats, it is my hope that the Select Subcommittee can play a meaningful role in this work.

And in service of every senior who we lost too soon at the hands of the pandemic, it is my hope that we can work together—every member of the Select Subcommittee—to make progress on this critically important mission so that we can save future lives.

With that, I yield back.

###