Next, someone should look at the success of the public housing that the Left wants more of
/
Hannah Cox (Aug 3)
Recently, the New York Times provided plenty of fodder supporting the latter anxiety, revealing the results of a study it conducted that examined the disparities between public and private healthcare at the height of the pandemic in New York City. The disparities included staffing levels, differences in the age and type of equipment available, and access to drugs and experimental treatments. As one might guess, patients at the city's community facilities fared far worse than those in private facilities, with their mortality rate 3 times higher in some cases.
All hospitals saw higher staff-to-patient ratios than best practices would recommend. In a typical emergency room, that figure should look like 1 nurse for every 4 patients. But during COVID-19, private facilities experienced ratios closer to 1 nurse for every 6 to 7 patients. At the government hospitals, that number was 1 nurse for every 10 to 15, and at times even 20 patients.
Less time per patient meant fewer tests, less information, and less monitoring. Several patients woke up from medically induced comas and, in confusion, removed their oxygen masks, leading to death. This occurred at the Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, where staff referred to the patients as “bathroom codes” as their bodies were typically discovered near the bathroom 30 to 45 minutes later. One doctor told the New York Times that for every 10 deaths he saw, two to three patients could have been saved with the proper care.
You might not think it could get worse, but it does. In response to the overcrowding, the city quickly put up makeshift hospitals. We now know those facilities were barely used. The paper looked at the hospital set up at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center to study why this occurred. Though the center was equipped with 470 beds and hundreds of employees (many of them out-of-state healthcare providers being paid handsomely), it ultimately saw only 79 patients and closed its doors after one month. It was a catastrophic failure, the kind only government can pull off.
There were multiple problems here. First, doctors were forced into a spiderweb of red tape upon arrival. They were given ridiculous amounts of paperwork, orientations, and training on computers, tying up their time during the height of the disease.
Secondly, city officials went back and forth on the criteria for who could be admitted to the overflow hospitals and gave conflicting data to providers on which patients to transfer. They landed on 25 exclusionary criteria that blocked patients, with symptoms such as fever from being moved. A fever is, of course, one of the primary symptoms of COVID-19.
Are you mad yet? I am. The city has already paid over $52 million in this arrangement, and it’s still paying. The report estimates this one facility might end up costing over $100 million when all is said and done, all for 79 patients. It’s a truly horrific report and reinforces what people like me have known for some time: The government should never run healthcare.
