April 6, 2020

Stephanie Ruhle introduced a segment with Ken Dilanian on a new internal assessment of how the Trump administration has done in helping the country's health care workers.

"Explain what is this all about. Day in and day out, we hear from the administration saying the hospitals have all that they need. At the same time, hospital workers and state governors are saying that's not the case," she said.

"Stephanie, this is a report by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services. So a watchdog but within the Trump administration," Delanian said.

"And what they did was, they interviewed 324 hospital administrators in 46 states. And what they found was a health care system in a state of chaos. Totally refuting the comments by President Trump on Saturday that he said hospital administrators were thrilled with the level of supplies. This report creates a picture of dire shortages, confirming what NBC News and other outlets have reported about shortages of ventilators and masks.

"Also going further and saying in some cases, shortages of cleaning supplies and even thermometers. One case they talked about a hospital, 700 staff and two thermometers. The hospital officials are worried about the health and safety of their own workers. They're concerned about their finances. We interviewed Ann Maxwell, the assistant inspector general. She seemed genuinely stunned with some of what her team found. Let's take a listen."

ANN MAXWELL: I think one moment that stands out for me is when I was talking to a hospital administrator, and he told me he had staff in the hospital out trying to procure masks and gloves from auto part shops, from home supply stores, from beauty salons, art supply stores. And I was just taken aback by how in that one example you could see both the desperation, the challenges they're facing, and ingenuity they were putting forward in trying to solve these problems to provide good patient care and save lives.

"In some cases, Stephanie, what this report found is -- federal and state stockpiles were defective. They got a shipment of masks for children and 1,000 had dry rot. So big problems with the federal response and hospital administrators are begging the federal government to do more," Delanian said.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon