A second county has now revised its COVID death stats lower. Basically, they were marking anyone who had COVID and died as a death due to COVID even if they had no evidence of that. What this means is that the COVID death stats are inflated. The reason they were inflated is so that hospitals can get paid more. This is the same reason they are going to vaccinate kids (more money for pharma) even though they are at little risk from COVID. It is always all about the money.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fact-check-medicare-hospitals-paid-more-covid-19-patients-coronavirus/3000638001/
We rate the claim that hospitals get paid more if patients are listed as COVID-19 and on ventilators as TRUE.
Hospitals and doctors do get paid more for Medicare patients diagnosed with COVID-19 or if it's considered presumed they have COVID-19 absent a laboratory-confirmed test, and three times more if the patients are placed on a ventilator to cover the cost of care and loss of business resulting from a shift in focus to treat COVID-19 cases.
https://www.foxnews.com/health/santa-clara-countys-covid-19-death-toll-drops-by-22-after-review
A county in northern California announced last week that it revised the method in how it registered coronavirus deaths that led to a 22% drop in its death toll, a report said.
Santa Clara County had been tallying anyone who died with the virus as a COVID-19 death, even if it did not play a role. But the county now says that in order for a death to be attributed to the virus, the disease needs to be listed as contributing the cause of death, the Mercury News reported.
Dr. Sarah Rudman, the county’s assistant public health officer, told the paper that the original process—during the height of the surge—"was the right decision at the time."
The death toll dropped by 22%, from 2,201 to 1,696 deaths.
Last month, the state’s Alameda County announced that it cut its death toll by around 25% after determining that some deaths were not a "direct result" of the virus.