This post is about the claim that hospitals are over-reporting a diagnosis of COVID-19 for financial gain. They aren’t.
But the lunatic fringe (and certain Senators, apparently) have to make this claim, in order to support the equally nonsensical claim that there have been just a few thousand COVID-19 deaths in the US (addressed here in Post #793). For the simple reason that if you admit that we’re closing in on 400,000 hospitalizations for COVID-19, it’s hard to claim just a few thousand deaths. And so, they need a reason to claim that the hospitalizations aren’t really COVID-19 hospitalizations.
And, frankly, you have to be willfully stupid to believe that claim about deaths, because you have to ignore all the rest of the evidence in front of you. The high death tolls in foreign countries. The uptick in total US deaths. The critical shortages of ICU beds, respirators, and PPE reported in many areas. And so on.
But what I find fascinating about the hospital claim is that it is such carefully crafted propaganda. All good propaganda has a grain of truth. And that’s the case in this story being told about COVID-19 and hospitalizations. Continue reading Post #802: Medicare Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) meet the lunatic fringe.