What Happened in Hospitals During Covid?

[Snowy79]

On 4/26/2023 at 12:09 PM, Lee said:

American Thinker  25 Apr,2023

CAUTION:   This article isn't very pleasant; some should consider reading something else instead. To most of us Covid was a major inconvenience but to others it got personal quick. My best friends mom was staying in a nursing home in PA. PA did the same thing as NY did and shoved Covid positive cases into the nursing homes. Friends mom got Covid and died in a couple of weeks. My friend wasn't even allowed into the building where she stayed. Every few days the nurses would send a pic of his mom until she passed.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/what_happened_in_hospitals_during_covid.html

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A couple of the organisations listed have a vested interest in taking things to court regardless of the truth. Without a doubt it was a stupid thing putting covid patients into care homes without the necessary safe guards in place. As for alternative treatments and the use of forced air etc there have been multiple studies into this protocal World wide and it would appear in countries without stretched health care systems very few covid patients died using this proitocal, in more stretched countries deaths increased exponentially as the covid had reached too advanced a stage before the patients were being put on the protocal.

I'm sure it will all come out in court but so far every court case funded by the anti covid vax crowd has been thrown out due to misinformation. Remember many of these organisations have made millions to date and pay their executives crazy money by spreading misinformation and using clickbait sites. 

[OnMyWay]

I just read the article and have one question for those here who might know.  Of course, this example is for the U.S.  My question is, is the quoted section here accurate?  I'm fairly certain some of it is true, but I never saw such a detailed breakdown.  The source is the link in the article to AAPS.

The hospital payments include:

A “free” required PCR test in the Emergency Room or upon admission for every patient, with government-paid fee to hospital.

Added bonus payment for each positive COVID-19 diagnosis.

Another bonus for a COVID-19 admission to the hospital.

A 20 percent “boost” bonus payment from Medicare on the entire hospital bill for use of remdesivir instead of medicines such as Ivermectin.

Another and larger bonus payment to the hospital if a COVID-19 patient is mechanically ventilated.

More money to the hospital if cause of death is listed as COVID-19, even if patient did not die directly of COVID-19.

A COVID-19 diagnosis also provides extra payments to coroners.

If this is all true, it seems like the door was left wide open for huge corruption and the door closed on accuracy.  Philippines had some similar "incentives" and with the corruption here, who knows what the reality is for Covid cases and deaths.

 

[Snowy79]

8 hours ago, OnMyWay said:

I just read the article and have one question for those here who might know.  Of course, this example is for the U.S.  My question is, is the quoted section here accurate?  I'm fairly certain some of it is true, but I never saw such a detailed breakdown.  The source is the link in the article to AAPS.

The hospital payments include:

A “free” required PCR test in the Emergency Room or upon admission for every patient, with government-paid fee to hospital.

Added bonus payment for each positive COVID-19 diagnosis.

Another bonus for a COVID-19 admission to the hospital.

A 20 percent “boost” bonus payment from Medicare on the entire hospital bill for use of remdesivir instead of medicines such as Ivermectin.

Another and larger bonus payment to the hospital if a COVID-19 patient is mechanically ventilated.

More money to the hospital if cause of death is listed as COVID-19, even if patient did not die directly of COVID-19.

A COVID-19 diagnosis also provides extra payments to coroners.

If this is all true, it seems like the door was left wide open for huge corruption and the door closed on accuracy.  Philippines had some similar "incentives" and with the corruption here, who knows what the reality is for Covid cases and deaths.

 

A breakdown is listed here, in short any extra money goes towards the extra care towards treating covid patients. The media loves playing on peoples doubts and depending on what side of the frence they sit depends whether they believe any news or not. 

https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/coronavirus-verify/covid-19-coronavirus-hospital-deaths-funding-medicare-fact-check/536-74efc62c-e1c6-43fa-8a22-0ff482593afd

Hospitals and health systems are eligible to receive higher Medicare payments for complex COVID-19-related treatment under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), including a Medicare add-on payment of 20% for both rural and urban inpatient hospital COVID-19 patients, according to the American Hospital Association (AHA). The CARES Act was signed into law by former President Donald Former President on March 27, 2020. 

While hospitals can receive additional funding to treat certain COVID-19 patients, an AHA spokesperson told VERIFY in a statement “that hospitals and health systems do not get paid based on a statement of the cause of death, regardless of what it is.” 

“They do get a bump in payment from Medicare if a patient has a diagnosis of COVID-19 listed on the bill,” the AHA spokesperson explained. “This is meant to recognize the additional costs associated with caring for COVID positive patients – costs such as additional PPE to protect staff and prevent spread, additional costs in cleaning and taking special precautions with all devices and materials moving in and out of the patient’s room, and additional costs in caring for the patient (such as therapeutics).” 

A Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) spokesperson confirmed that hospitals generally receive additional payments to treat Medicare patients diagnosed with COVID-19, but the payments are not tied to the patient’s cause of death. 

“The additional payment is not tied to whether or not the patient expires in the hospital, or the cause of death if the patient does expire in the hospital,” the CMS spokesperson told VERIFY in a statement.  

A Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) spokesperson also confirmed that Medicare provides a bump in payment for COVID-related treatment, but told VERIFY the additional payment is unrelated to whether a COVID-19 positive patient died at the hospital. The spokesperson also debunked claims that hospitals are trying to game the system to get more money.

“There’s no evidence of hospitals gaming the system to boost payments inappropriately,” the KFF spokesperson said. “There needs to be a documentation of a positive lab test for COVID-19 in the patient’s medical record in order to qualify for the 20% payment bump. If they did falsify records to get a pay bump, that would be fraud.” 

AHA president and CEO Rick Pollack also debunked claims that hospitals are somehow profiting off of COVID-19 deaths in blog posts published in September 2020 and November 2020. 

“Hospitals do not receive extra funds when patients die from COVID-19. They are not over-reporting COVID-19 cases. And, they are not making money on treating COVID-19,” Pollack wrote. “Hospitals and health systems adhere to strict coding guidelines, and use of the COVID-19 code for Medicare claims is reserved for confirmed cases. Coding inappropriately can result in criminal penalties and exclusion from the Medicare program altogether.”

[JJReyes]

10 hours ago, OnMyWay said:

A “free” required PCR test in the Emergency Room or upon admission for every patient, with government-paid fee to hospital.

Our pharmacist informed us, as seniors, we were entitled to receive 8 free covid test kits and we replied, "Okay."  Each had a prescription tag showing the US government was being charge $35.00 per test kit.  Free for us but a $560 bill to the government.  Never used any.  

[OnMyWay]

4 hours ago, Snowy79 said:

A breakdown is listed here,

That is mostly about debunking the "payment for Covid death", and Medicare.  Medicare, generally speaking, is for the older U.S. citizens.  Still leaves a lot to wonder about.

[Snowy79]

19 hours ago, OnMyWay said:

That is mostly about debunking the "payment for Covid death", and Medicare.  Medicare, generally speaking, is for the older U.S. citizens.  Still leaves a lot to wonder about.

I'm not fully up on it but I've seen a fair amount of doctors explaining that if they faked covid results etc they would face criminal charges and lose their licences, I'm not sure how many doctors, lab technicians etc would cover up for a hospital. 

Similar to when the antivaxers were trying to say they just used the RT-PCR test and cycled it so many times that they were finding positive cases then counting them. In reality they are what is called real time tests, when they start cycling them they can come back positive after 1,2 3 etc cycles, once the positive result is found it is recorded, the less cycles the more virus and contagious the person is. They had a cut off amount of cycles usually 35 times where if no positives were found then it was recorded as negative. Independent bodies took random samples of the test results to ensure the data was recorded correctly.

[JJReyes]

3 hours ago, Snowy79 said:

I'm not fully up on it but I've seen a fair amount of doctors explaining that if they faked covid results etc. they would face criminal charges and lose their licences, I'm not sure how many doctors, lab technicians etc. would cover up for a hospital. 

It's not outright massive cheating but more like the physician's judgement call.  In China, the complaint was patients were dying of pneumonia, not covid, to hide the true numbers.  In the United States, the incentive was to err towards covid because there were monetary incentives.  Government agencies turned a blind eye towards the practice because it meant receiving more money to administer programs related to the pandemic.   

[GeoffH]

4 hours ago, JJReyes said:

In China, the complaint was patients were dying of pneumonia, not covid, to hide the true numbers.  In the United States, the incentive was to err towards covid because there were monetary incentives.

About 8 months ago my sister died from a 'heart stoppage causing brain death before it could be restarted' that happened as a complication during an operation to insert a breathing tube.

That was being done because her oxygen level was too low despite the maximum rate of intubated oxygen due to the pneumonia in both of her lungs (they needed to do that in order to transfer her to a Melbourne hospital with had an ECMO machine (like they used to call artificial heart/lung breathing machines, they externally oxygenate the blood).

The pneumonia was caused due to COVID infection, she was admitted after testing positive and not improving, then she got worse and needed oxygen, then she was put into the Intensive Care Unit and then... the above.


So what was the 'medical cause' of her death?  One could say brain death, heart failure, pneumonia, complications caused by COVID or just plain COVID.

 

Sometimes it's not as simple as just ticking a box that says "cause of death".

 

RIP Cheryl