By declaring a National Public Health Emergency in January 2020 in response to the spread of COVID-19 in the United States, apparent justification was provided for sweeping U.S. government actions that overrode informed decision-making by individuals and physicians; provided financial incentives for diagnosing, treating and reporting COVID-19 cases; and abridged the long-established medical rights of patients.
This remains a legitimate cause for concern among COVID-19 patients because their rights should never be abridged and conflicts of interest with their health care providers should generally be minimized. Also, both patients and the medical community should be worried about this heavy-handed government intervention since each case seen by a physician has unique elements, so a one-size-fits-all COVID-19 treatment protocol can often either cause undue harm or result in insufficient care being provided to the patients in their care. Furthermore, the financial incentives provided for diagnosing COVID-19 cases, treating them and reporting COVID-related deaths can result in skewed data on the disease that may then be used to set seriously flawed and even unethical public policy, such as vaccine and mask mandates.
The CARES Act and Its Influence on U.S. COVID-19 Treatment Protocols The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security or CARES Act (Public Law 116–136) was passed by both houses of the U.S. Congress and signed by then-President Trump in March of 2020. It provides various financial incentives for hospitals to employ treatments that were dictated solely by the federal government under the National Institute of Health's guidance. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) also issued a problematic set of blanket COVID-19 waivers of patient rights in response to the pandemic. It also implemented value-based payment programs that track information like how many workers at a healthcare facility have received a COVID-19 vaccine. These actions by the CMS have resulted in the abridgment of some well-established medical patient rights and have incentivized many hospitals to implement COVID-19 vaccine mandates since they are paid more by the CMS if they do. Furthermore, such incentives effectively act as bounties to hospitals, clinics, other health care facilities and medical professionals to first make a COVID-19 diagnosis using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, which is notorious for giving false-positive results, and then follow the government-dictated COVID-19 treatment protocol that can be overly harmful to some patients. Hospitals and Medical Professionals Incentivized to Diagnose and Treat COVID-19 Incentive payments made to hospitals under the CARES Act for medical procedures and other tasks include:
A free and required PCR test is performed at U.S. government expense in the emergency room or upon admission for every hospital patient.
A bonus payment is made to the hospital for each positive COVID-19 diagnosis.
A bonus payment is made for a COVID-19 admission to the hospital.
A 20 percent bonus from Medicare that provides health services to the elderly is paid based on the entire hospital bill for the use of remdesivir, which has severe potential side effects associated with it, instead of less costly and far safer antiviral medicines like colloidal silver.
An additional larger bonus payment to the hospital if it mechanically ventilates a COVID-19 patient.
More money is paid to the hospital if a patient's cause of death is listed on a death certificate as COVID-19, even if the patient did not die directly of COVID-19.
A COVID-19 diagnosis involved in a death also results in extra money paid to the coroner who investigates the death.
As further evidence of the size of such incentives and their likely impact on behavior in the health care industry, Minnesota State Senator and physician Dr. Scott Jensen claimed in an April 2020 Fox News interview that:
“Right now Medicare is determining that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital you get $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator you get $39,000, three times as much. Nobody can tell me after 35 years in the world of medicine that sometimes those kinds of things impact on what we do.”
In May 2020, CBS News also verified that:
“Hospitals do get paid more for COVID-19 related cases. A provision in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security or CARES Act pays an additional 20% on top of traditional Medicare rates during the public health emergency.”
While the actual amount that each hospital receives for diagnosing and treating a COVID-19 patient cannot be easily ascertained and is probably variable due to case severity and geographical variations, some observers have estimated that it could be at least $100,000 per patient.
Physicians' Pay Increased for Treating COVID Patients with EUA Drugs
The performance of individual physicians are often assessed by the quality metrics in the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) where:
“Using a composite performance score, eligible clinicians (ECs) may receive a payment bonus, a payment penalty or no payment adjustment.”
This data comes from the CMS and effectively links doctors’ income to their MIPS score as a form of performance-based pay. A physician's MIPS score is increased, and hence their income, for treating patients with experimental COVID-19 drugs that remain under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) because they have not been fully approved by the FDA. Furthermore, failure to report information to the CMS can cost a physician 4% of the reimbursement amount. This provides yet another financial incentive for physicians to act against what they think might be in a patient's best interest.
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Sign the Medical Freedom Petition to Oppose Unethical Mandates in Lake County
If you are concerned about the financial conflicts of interest that health care providers and physicians may have when diagnosing, treating and reporting COVID-19 cases and wish to oppose the imposition of medical mandates in Lake County that could result from the excess reporting of COVID cases, then please take a moment to sign this important Medical Freedom petition and share it widely on Social Media now to take a clear stand for medical freedom in Lake County.
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