Seems like I spend most of my time writing posts to counter conspiracy after conspiracy on Anti-Social Media. Today I’m going to tackle the ongoing siege on the fact that hospitals get “paid” more for a Covid patient and patients on ventilators. Let’s talk a little about how hospitals get “paid”. Hospitals make a profit by performing surgeries, scans and other well-reimbursed services to privately insured patients, whose plans pay higher prices than public programs like Medicare. Yes they get paid for lots of OTHER services…but those are generally “supportive” and not particularly profitable. Things like labwork, physical therapy, etc. Quickly let’s touch on Medicare reimbursement. Medicare is a federal health insurance program that provides benefits to seniors and those with disabilities and certain illnesses. Medicare has several parts. Part A covers hospitals, nursing facilities, and home health services. Medicare pre-determines a base payment rate for a given unit of service (e.g., a hospital stay, an episode of care, a particular service). There are SOME adjustments geographically…but basically that dollar amount is what the hospital gets….not a fee for every little service the hospital provides. For example, a hospital would probably recieve between $14-20,000 for a pneumonia admission.
Now the HORROR that is circulating on FaceBook is that hospitals get paid more for a Covid patient on a ventilator!! ……..yes and??? OF COURSE the reimbursement is higher on a vent because the UTILIZATION of nursing, supplies, therapists, labwork is EXPONENTIALLY higher! How is that a “kickback”? Covid is the LAST way they want to make money…..IN FACT most hospitals are going broke during all of this because aside from the ICU MOST of the rest of the hospital is EMPTY…….no surgeries, no recovery room, closed down pediatric wards. Top that off with millions of newly unemployed Americans expected to lose the health coverage they received at work. So the hospitals are struggling with thousands of unreimbursed admissions by patients with NO insurance! Here are some articles that will REALLY tell you the financial struggle Covid has caused for hospitals.
You even have Seattle Children’s Hospital CLOSING due to financial losses due to Covid!
So YES hospitals do get paid additional money for Covid patients and YES as with any enterprise there are probably some playing a little footsy with the billing codes, BUT lay off hospitals……if you get sick enough you might just need a good one. When a hospital closes the entire community suffers. Support those working on the front lines of this tirelessly saving lives!
Actually, hospitals are being paid MORE for Covid admissions. The amount has been boosted up to $50,000 per admission:
…..”The second round of funding announced today was based on a formula for hospitals with over 161 COVID-19 admissions between January 1 and June 10, 2020, or one admission per day, or that experienced a disproportionate intensity of COVID admissions (exceeding the average ratio of COVID admissions/bed). Hospitals will be paid $50,000 per eligible admission.”
https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/07/17/hhs-begin-distributing-10-billion-additional-funding-hospitals-high-impact-covid-19-areas.html
High impact hospitals received even more:
……”Payment Allocation per Hospital = Number of COVID-19 Admissions* x $76,975″
https://www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/cares-act-provider-relief-fund/general-information/index.html
And, this doesn’t even touch on the fact that treatment for Covid for thousands of uninsured or laid off workers was paid for by the CARES Act.
Good stuff! The data isn’t easy to find.
I agree that the hospitals were getting pounded, by not being able to do elective and scheduled surgeries and other procedures. But, how many “questionable” Covid cases were pushed over to the “Covid assumed” column, since the hospitals knew they would be paid a bounty on them? How many seasonal flu cases and pneumonia cases got moved into that column?
Dr Fauci did a CNN interview in the first week of January (halfway through the flu season), and he stated this years flu deaths would be in the 60K – 80K range, like back in 2018, because we were having a bad year. The CDC reported in April that we had around 34K flu deaths. So, where did the other 30K – 50K flu deaths go, that Fauci thought we were going to have? Isn’t he the expert?
Remember, it was either the CDC or WHO which came out with a NEW ICD code for Covid deaths, as “Presumed Covid”, since it was taking so long for the tests to come back, and the coroner had to put something on the death certificate within 24 hours. How many of these “presumed” cases or flu cases were moved into the Covid death column in the country, artificially increasing the total?
So, the CDC came out with a report that says the infection rate in So. Florida is at least 11 times HIGHER than the reported infections, based on Seroprevalence and asymptomatic. (in NY, it’s at least 12 times HIGHER) (go to the link, you can choose difference areas).
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/commercial-labs-interactive-serology-dashboard.html
Based on that data, what does that do to the reported hospitalization rates and death rates, and actually how deadly the virus truly is? Death rates and hospitalization rates are actually 11 times lower than the real infection rates. Puts this right into the range of the Seasonal Flu, right?
Then add in the “gaming” to classify cases as Covid in the hospitals to get the higher payments, instead of what they really are….. Really destroys the MSM narrative on CNN and MSNBC…. right?