I worked in health insurance for a number of years and I'm sure hospitals are motivated to code claims using the covid-19 diagnosis. This makes complete sense:
"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."
In theory, reimbursement is supposed to be proportional to the costs of care, but quite often it isn't. When a hospital can stick a diagnosis code on a claim that increases reimbursement from medicare (or whoever) by 3 fold, they will absolutely do it if they think they can get away with it. If a death certificate lists covid-19 on it then that 100% backs their claim if they should happen to get audited.
This is one of the many reasons why American health insurance is so fucked up.
but the bit your missing is fact checkers and people currently in the finance system of hospitals have been quoted as saying that hospitals dont get a 3x payment for just writing covid19 on a discharge form
its also said that its not a simple one lump sum one size fits all payment
.. to actually make a financial profit/excess they would have to add tests/procedures that were not required
..
dont get me wrong i bet that there are some idiot ER doctors that do ARDS treatments on patients that are not ARDS but are only mild symptom sufferers. but those type of idiot doctors would be dealt with later at their reviews. and suspended or taken off the critical ward that day.
but to do these tests would reveal test results and obviously if the test results didnt confirm the diagnoses. then its not going to be the diagnosis/cause of death.
again covid deaths would have a covid positive test done. as debunked in other posts 'suspected' cases are not included in the official figures. which is why they are saying that more could have died and not recorded because tests were not done . such as those in hospices that die.
this the the exact reasons why china was first saying 3k deaths that then jumped to 4k because the extra 1k were ones that they were not sure of
at first.
this is why in the UK when the official count was 10k they said another 4k was not accounted for but was hospice/retirement home numbers. but the UK didnt just add those numbers into official numbers but keep them as a secondary report
america hasnt added in the 'suspected cases' .. yes PA did temporarily but then realised it scews the official fully diagnosed numbers, so retracted the extra's so that reports account for only the 100% tested numbers
yes i can see some doctors doing useless treatments on patients like adding a requirement for a bedpan and bedbath, even if the patient can walk to the bathroom themselves.
but the official publicly released numbers are actually undercutting the real extent because they are only including the patients that have been thoroughly tested and diagnosed