re: When does the CDC typically put out the data for total number of heart disease deaths?

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longwayfromLA

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All those dollar amounts I listed were additional on top of the usual medical costs. They weren’t new CPT billing codes. They were literal per diem additional payments.

And it wasn’t some grand conspiracy that rank n file healthcare workers all colluded to do.

Hospitals have hierarchies of incentivized management/stakeholders. From majority shareholders to boards of directors to chief officers. And all they have to do is get a handful of middle-management underlings who desperately want to keep their jobs while enjoying some fat bonuses they were promised to make sure final reports lean a certain direction.

frick sake, they already do it with Medicare. Hence why the DOJ has a designated Medicare Fraud Unit who prosecutes hundreds of cases every year, at least 30% of which are healthcare facilities and employees, while Medicare estimates over $50 billion a year lost to fraud. And this doesn’t account for the hundreds of healthcare facilities and doctors who don’t get prosecuted but simply fined for the most widespread offense of over-billing.

If they can do it with Medicare, they can certainly do it with covid subsidies that had far less regulation and controls.

I mean how deluded and naive do you have to be to think hospitals and doctors are all incorruptible and would never cheat to make money??

What planet of dipshits do you come from?

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What planet of dipshits do you come from?

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He works for a hospital.

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This was the New York State Health Dept official flu tracking data.

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And we all know how trustworthy they are.

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And all they have to do is get a handful of middle-management underlings who desperately want to keep their jobs while enjoying some fat bonuses they were promised to make sure final reports lean a certain direction.

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Yeah, No. Leaving aside that this isn't how compensation works in most hospital systems, remember what you're saying is being done.

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falsify positive testing and diagnosis, as well as ventilator usage

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You wouldn't be able to commit the fraud you're suggesting without dozens of people in multiple clinical units, quality, coding, billing, and other parts of the rev cycle. There are like four separate departments in hospital systems that have their own separate reasons to be looking at the relationship between diagnoses, coding, and treatment paths. Any of them would stumble onto your lame fraud by accident, as would the clinical documentation integrity application that you are pretending doesn't exist. This would have to be a huge operation.

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Hence why the DOJ has a designated Medicare Fraud Unit who prosecutes hundreds of cases every year, at least 30% of which are healthcare facilities and employees, while Medicare estimates over $50 billion a year lost to fraud

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I am very familiar. It's actually my point. It's not like CMS and Payers just in the COVID period started caring about stopping hospitals from falsifying diagnoses and upcoding. What do you think those teams do? They've been at this game for years. Hospitals would be disinclined to commit the fraud you're suggesting because CMS and the commercial payers would so very easily detect it (they have the same clinical documentation accuracy software, better even). It's amateurish and it requires way too many people. Before it ever gets to a fraud unit, CMS and the payers catch it in the audits that they do all the time.

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If they can do it with Medicare, they can certainly do it with covid subsidies that had far less regulation and controls.

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Do what with what subsidies? Remember I'm pushing back on your claim that hospitals are committing Medicare fraud so they can lose money on COVID patients. I'm not sure what subsidies have to do with that.

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I mean how deluded and naive do you have to be to think hospitals and doctors are all incorruptible and would never cheat to make money??

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I'm not saying that at all. I am a pretty senior administrator at a sizeable healthcare system. I know a number of folks would absolutely commit fraud, but not the way neophytic way you're suggesting since it would lead right to federal prison. They'd probably bilk MA or a state program because states are usually pretty dumb. But not this dumb.

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Hospitals would be disinclined to commit the fraud you're suggesting because CMS and the commercial payers would so very easily detect it

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Because if there's one thing we know about the COVID shitshow, it's that there are very bright and capable people focused on making sure every federal dollar spent is spent wisely, legally and ethically.

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Because if there's one thing we know about the COVID shitshow, it's that there are very bright and capable people focused on making sure every federal dollar spent is spent wisely, legally and ethically.

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You're looking to expand my claim, which is that the particular kind of Medicare fraud BeefDawg is describing is super stupid and a one-way ticket to prison, to a much larger claim about the Feds ability to track COVID dollars. Which is just you conceding that you can't counter what I'm actually saying and thus need a strawman to knockdown. I hope that was fun for you.

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It’s not fraud when CMS says to do it. It’s still not representative of the actual health situation. Chill out.

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Let's review. BeefDawg said that hospitals...

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falsify positive testing and diagnosis, as well as ventilator usage and extended stay for folks who may not have needed it.

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I went on at length about how stupid that is. You replied by saying that...

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The CDC changed the rules of the game and it has definitely increased deaths attributed to Covid.

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Which I noted has frick-all to do with whether hospitals are systematically committing Medicare fraud. And your response to that is to claim that CMS is telling hospitals to falsify positive COVID tests diagnoses and other medical records regarding these patients?

I must have missed that memo.

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Which is just you conceding that you can't counter what I'm actually saying and thus need a strawman to knockdown. I hope that was fun for you.

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There's nothing for me to concede. FFS, it's not always about some fine point you've tried to make. I didn't even read through your exchange with whomever. I'm simply making the point that the medical industry is awash in COVID money, and you're an idiot if you believe large swaths of it aren't making bank on COVID. The medical industrial complex is teeming with graft/corruption, and has unfortunately proven itself political AF ... which is too bad, in my book.

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Clearly you’re biased as frick and doing your best to be a good little apologist for the industry you work for.

But you have zero explanation for why this NY State Health Dept flu tracking chart that I also posted earlier shows flu cases miraculously fall off a cliff from record highs to freaking zero in a matter of weeks literally the moment the CARES Act was passed and hospitals began receiving extra money for covid patients.

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I haven't made a comment one way or the other about the disappearance of flu this season, which is something being observed not just in New York, but all over the world. I didn't say anything about that, because we weren't talking about that at all. The flu has nothing to do with my challenge to your claim that hospitals...

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falsify positive testing and diagnosis, as well as ventilator usage and extended stay for folks who may not have needed it.

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All I did was explain just a few of the ways that such a claim is stupid.

At this point, you have gotten it through your thick-skull that your claim about hospital executives falsifying medical records for COVID so they can lose money and go to jail is untrue and that I am much more knowledgeable on this topic than you are. So now you're looking to move the conversation to what you perceive to be safer ground, the disappearance of flu in NYC. I'm not biting, you can believe whatever conspiracy theory you want about that. Wherever you land on that question does not change the fact that your suggestion that hospitals...

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falsify positive testing and diagnosis, as well as ventilator usage and extended stay for folks who may not have needed it.

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is stupid and you have no idea what you're talking about.

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I haven't made a comment one way or the other about the disappearance of flu this season, which is something being observed not just in New York, but all over the world. I didn't say anything about that, because we weren't talking about that at all.

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So just as I said, you have no explanation for why the flu miraculously disappeared from record highs to zero at the exact moment hospitals began getting extra money for covid diagnosis.

Thanks for confirming that.