Sen. Scott Jensen, R-Minn., a physician in Minnesota, was interviewed by “The Ingraham Angle” host Laura Ingraham on April 8 on Fox News and claimed hospitals get paid more if Medicare patients are listed as having COVID-19 and get three times as much money if they need a ventilator.
The claim was published April 9 by The Spectator, a conservative publication. WorldNetDaily shared it April 10 and, according to Snopes, a related meme was shared on social media in mid-April.
The story had legs for the next couple of weeks although Jensen clearly said he doesn’t believe there was an ethical violation in how patients are treated.
Caveat: The information came from a tabloid, The Daily Mail.
USA Today Ruled It True
USA Today rated the claim that hospitals get paid more if patients are listed as COVID-19 and on ventilators as TRUE.
Hospitals and doctors do get paid more for Medicare patients diagnosed with COVID-19 or if it’s considered presumed they have COVID-19 absent a laboratory-confirmed test, and three times more if the patients are placed on a ventilator to cover the cost of care and loss of business resulting from a shift in focus to treat COVID-19 cases.
This higher allocation of funds has been made possible under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act through a Medicare 20% add-on to its regular payment for COVID-19 patients, as verified by USA TODAY through the American Hospital Association Special Bulletin on the topic.
THE ALARMING INFORMATION
After this was published, we saw a video by a nurse named Sara P. who reported on some very alarming information. We have no way to confirm this. The original link has been taken down from Facebook. We don’t know if this is accurate but we are putting it up for discussion purposes only.
Every occupation has some bad practitioners, and this makes one wonder. This is especially concerning after we were told Governor Cuomo dumped the elderly sick who have the virus into ill-equipped nursing homes, instead of hospitals.
In any case, the extra funds encourage dishonest reporting by desperate hospitals. Doctors have reported pressure on them to report everyone who is “presumed” to have COV as COV.
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