Hospitals and doctors are getting paid more for Medicare patients diagnosed with COVID-19 — or if it’s presumed they’ve contracted the virus save for laboratory-confirmed tests — and then the payout triples if those patients are placed on ventilators, according to a USA Today fact check.
Minnesota state Sen. Scott Jensen, a Republican and a physician, initially made the claims to Fox News’ host Laura Ingraham on April 8.
On April 14, New York City’s total coronavirus death toll saw a major spike after officials added more than 3,700 fatalities to the count “including people who had never tested positive for the virus but were presumed to have died of it,” according to the paper.
On April 15, Jensen noted on his Facebook page: “How can anyone not believe that increasing the number of COVID-19 deaths may create an avenue for states to receive a larger portion of federal dollars.”
Four days later, Jensen said via video on his Facebook page that “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. 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,” USA Today reported.
WIBC’s The Chicks on the Right have more in the clip below.
https://omny.fm/shows/chicks-on-the-right/hospitals-make-bank-off-covid-declarations
