United States hospitals have a “perverse” monetary “incentive” to increase their count of coronavirus fatalities, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s director Robert Redfield indicated under questioning from a Republican lawmaker during a House panel hearing on Friday.

Asked to comment on what Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO) described as the “perverse incentive” during a hearing by the House Oversight and Reform Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, Dr. Redfield responded:

I think you’re correct in that we’ve seen this in other disease processes too, really in the HIV epidemic, somebody may have a heart attack, but also have HIV — the hospital would prefer the [classification] for HIV because there’s greater reimbursement.

So I do think there’s some reality to that. When it comes to death reporting, though, ultimately, it’s how the physician defines it in the death certificate and … we review all of those death certificates.

So I think, probably it is less operable in the cause of death, although I won’t say there are not some cases. I do think though [that] when it comes to hospital reimbursement issues or individuals that get discharged, there could be some play in that for sure...

31 Jul: Gateway Pundit: Ontario, Canada Govt Medical Official Warns Against Mass Coronavirus Testing– ‘Will Not Actually Achieve Anything’, False Positives ‘Almost Half’ in Low COVID Areas (Video)
by Kristinn Taylor
As Ontario, Canada prepares to open schools for children in September, Ontario’s Associate Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Barbara Yaffe warned against mass testing for the COVID-19 China coronavirus, saying it takes resources from other needed areas and does not “actually achieve anything.” Dr. Yaffe also said that in areas with low incidences of COVID infection, the rate for false positive test results is “almost half.”

Yaffe said testing should be reserved for suspected cases, people with symptoms and their contacts....
“You know, I think a lot of people think that testing is going to really solve the whole problem, and it isn’t. It’s one component of a response. If you test somebody today, uh, you only know if they’re infected today. And in fact if you’re testing in a population that doesn’t have very much COVID, you’ll get false positives almost half the time. That is the person actually doesn’t have COVID, they have something else, they may have nothing. Uh, so it will just complicate the picture.”...
Transcribed by TGP.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/07/ontario-canada-govt-medical-official-warns-mass-coronavirus-testing-will-not-actually-achieve-anything-false-positives-almost-half-low-covid-areas-video/

FakeNewsMSM not touching Dr. Yaffe’s “false positives” story. even when CTV includes video of her in this tweet, they link to a completely different story at CTV:

Tweet: CTV News, Ontario, Canada
Ontario Associate Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Barbara Yaffe says mandatory COVID-19 testing for teachers “will just complicate the picture.” Read more: CTV LINK CTV
VIDEO 1m46s
31 Jul 2020
https://twitter.com/CTVNews/status/1288907122818854913

The widespread diagnostic test for the virus in a patient, the PCR, is riddled with irreparable flaws. It spits out false-positives, because the test reacts to the presence of irrelevant germs that have nothing to do with a purported COVID.

Most importantly the test has never been vetted, in the real world, for its claimed ability to detect whether a patient is ill or is going to become ill.

According to the CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel https://bit.ly/2L8NV9I

“Positive results are indicative of active infection with 2019-nCoV but do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease.

Negative results do not preclude 2019-nCoV infection and should not be used as the sole basis for treatment or other patient management decisions.”

Translation: A positive test doesn’t guarantee that the COVID virus is causing infection at all. Then again, maybe the COVID virus is not be in the patient’s body either.

From the World Health Organization (WHO): “Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) technical guidance: Laboratory testing for 2019-nCoV in humans” https://bit.ly/3cidWiS

“Several assays that detect the 2019-nCoV have been and are currently under development, both in-house and commercially. Some assays may detect only the novel virus [COVID] and some may also detect other strains (e.g. SARS-CoV) that are genetically similar.”

Translation: Some PCR tests register positive for types of coronavirus that have nothing to do with COVID—including plain old coronas that cause nothing more than a cold.

As far as the “assays that detect the 2019-nCOV that are currently under development. Yeah, just a few.

For a test that is supposed to be so definitive and accurate, there sure are a great many firms in development of testing for the diagnosis of COVID-19

Actually, 761 of them the diagnostic pipeline at the time of this post as a matter of fact. https://bit.ly/3clw4Za

If the testing on this is so definitive, why are 761 companies still developing testing for it?

Possibly because they still have not effectively isolated the virus and still don’t know what exactly it is that they are looking for.

Or could it be that it is extremely difficult to detect this SARS-CoV-2 virus because it is easily defeated by the immune system? (Note: SARS-CoV-2 virus. Hmmm…thought this was something so novel we have not seen it before? When then is it so similar to the SARS virus that it is called SARS-CoV-2 then? That would indicate that it is similar in nature to a virus we are well aware of so similar to a known virus that it is labeled as -2.

Gee, maybe not so novel after all huh? No more novel than any other mutated SARS virus which is quite common with RNA viruses like this SARS-CoV-2 virus btw. All RNA viruses mutate regularly which is why these virus vaccines are so ineffective, their target changes so quickly.

Or possibly that it is so immensely difficult to test an individual for a specific virus when the samples are always contaminated with all kinds of germs including bacteria, other viral strains and other DNA/RNA bearing tissues?

But what do the manufacturers say about the COVID diagnostic test? How about this gem from Creative Diagnostics, a popular test manufacturer:

This product is intended for the detection of 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV). The detection result of this product is only for clinical reference, and it should not be used as the only evidence for clinical diagnosis and treatment. https://bit.ly/2KnJ4kP

In other words: Don’t use the test result alone to diagnose infection or disease.

Pretty confident about their testing huh?

Perhaps that is why the CDC includes “probable cases” in their statistical counts:

What is a COVID-19 probable case?

A probable case or death is defined by

Meeting clinical criteria AND epidemiologic evidence with no confirmatory laboratory testing performed for COVID-19; or

Meeting presumptive laboratory evidence AND either clinical criteria OR epidemiologic evidence; or Meeting vital records criteria with no confirmatory laboratory testing performed for COVID-19. https://bit.ly/3bdziMV

Translation: You don’t even have to have “confirmatory laboratory testing performed” in order for the case to be considered a COVID-19 case.

I guess that could be helpful to the hospitals who have had their cash cows of elective surgery eliminated (80% of many hospitals incomes) and are losing money now.

They could just drop a medicare patient into the “probable COVID-19 category” and go from a standard Medicare admit of $4,600 to a COVID admit billable for $13,000 now. About a 3X billable increase.

And heck, if they can get them on a ventilator with a COVID diagnosis, the Medicare admit jumps to $39,000, over an 8-fold increase!

I guess its a conspiracy theory to imagine that hospitals losing money due to the contraction of their scheduled surgery income would begin to amazingly turn up more COVID cases and put some of these people with respiratory issues on ventilators as well.

Yeah…might not have anything to do with increasing revenues I guess since we know that ALL hospitals and doctors operate with full integrity and complete concern for ALL patients.

Uh, interested in a bridge in Brooklyn real cheap?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.