CDC director acknowledges hospitals have a monetary incentive to overcount coronavirus deaths

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield agreed that some hospitals have a monetary incentive to overcount coronavirus deaths as they do deaths for other diseases.

"I think you’re correct in that we’ve seen this in other disease processes, too. Really, in the HIV epidemic, somebody may have a heart attack but also have HIV — the hospital would prefer the [classification] for HIV because there’s greater reimbursement,” Redfield said during a House panel hearing Friday when asked by Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer about potential “perverse incentives.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...ary-incentive-to-overcount-coronavirus-deaths

 

I was recently in the hospital. I received a call from a case manager at my insurance company asking me why I was in the hospital, what brought me to the ER and what was my diagnoses. I was curious as I had never received a call like that (and I've been in the ER and/or hospital about 75 times in the past 10 years or so). She said they are just doing after-hospitalization calls to check on patients. I mentioned the call to a friend in nursing care and she said they are really checking up to see if the patient's responses match what diagnoses codes are submitted by the hospital.

I think it's a good idea to check and recheck but it's rather sad that we have to do something like that just to make sure hospital administrators are being honest.

 

The CDC has already done excess death studies. Objectively, whatever "incentives" you want to theorize about, we are most likely undercounting.

 

We've known this for months, with medical officials, investigative journalists, and others all sounding the alarm, but it's always good to have yet another article to remind people of the facts.

You've got to love this little snippet from the article: "An investigation in Florida found that several deaths were wrongly attributed to the virus, including the case of a man who died from a gunshot wound to the head."

 

I'm not theorizing anything. The Director of the CDC is stating it as a matter of fact.

And it had already been established that COVID-19 caused deaths are over-counted.

 

Again, this is false. The CDC has studied this and the deaths have been under-counted.