Robert Malone on hospitals: what the evidence says · JRE #1757
SUBJECT: HOSPITALS
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
the hospitals receive a bonus from the government. I think it's like $3,000 if someone is hospitalized and able to be declared COVID positive. They also receive a bonus. I think the total is something like $30,000 in incentive
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
The CARES Act (2020) added a 20% Medicare payment bonus on top of standard diagnosis-related-group (DRG) rates for inpatient COVID-19 cases, and separately funded reimbursement, at Medicare rates, for treating uninsured COVID-19 patients. A similar claim (from Minnesota state senator Scott Jensen, citing $13,000 for a COVID-19 admission and $39,000 if the patient goes on a ventilator) was examined by FactCheck.org, which found the figures roughly matched Kaiser Family Foundation estimates of average Medicare payments for the relevant DRGs ($13,297 for a respiratory hospitalization with major complications; $40,218 for a respiratory case requiring over 96 hours of ventilator support) but reflect total treatment reimbursement rather than a discrete per-action "bonus" for a COVID diagnosis or for placing a patient on a ventilator. Health-policy experts quoted by FactCheck.org, from UCLA's Center for Health Policy Research and the Urban Institute, said there is no evidence hospitals are inflating COVID-19 diagnoses or ventilator use for financial gain, noted hospitals face civil and criminal liability for upcoding, and said hospital revenues generally fell during the pandemic because elective procedures, a key revenue source, were suspended. Malone's specific figures ($3,000 and $30,000) are lower than but in the same range as those commonly cited, and the underlying characterization, that a discrete "bonus" is paid, has been repeatedly found by fact-checkers to conflate standard treatment reimbursement with an incentive to misclassify patients.