Quote
PHDram
"Hospital administrators might well want to see COVID-19 attached to a discharge summary or a death certificate. Why? Because if it's a straightforward, garden-variety pneumonia that a person is admitted to the hospital for—if they're Medicare—typically, the diagnosis-related group lump sum payment would be $5,000,” said Jensen, whose claim was fact-checked by USA Today. “But if it's COVID-19 pneumonia, then it's $13,000, and if that COVID-19 pneumonia patient ends up on a ventilator, it goes up to $39,000."
The idea that physicians would be pressured to list COVID-19 on death certificates even when it appears the virus had little or nothing to do with someone’s cause of death might sound crazy, but some would say it was entirely predictable.
“We aren’t pressured to test for flu. Why are we being pressured to add Covid?”
“Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome,” American businessman Charlie Munger once observed.
The economic incentive is clear and does not require any conspiracy.
By creating a massive federal program that links goosed Medicare payments to COVID-19 treatments, the feds incentivized hospitals to add COVID-19 to diagnostic lists and death certificates. It also incentivized hospitals to get patients on ventilators, which may have done more harm than good, as hospitals have reported unusually high fatality rates for COVID-19 patients on ventilators.
source: [
fee.org]
