Are Kung Flu death counts being goosed for insurance reasons?


Posted On: Wednesday - April 15th 2020 7:12PM MST
In Topics: 
  Healthcare Stupidity  Scams  Kung Flu Stupidity



This is very much related to the final point made in the previous post, the 2nd part of its title being "goosing the numbers".

The health "insurance" business, more correctly dubbed "health Plan"* business is very big, as health care is something like 1/6 of the American economy. My extremely worried family member noted to me that were I to get the Kung Flu, the co-pay would amount to $15,000, per her estimation. That was meant to scare me into various anti- and de-contamination practices, much of which would end all manner of living a normal life.

Au contraire! I received information about our insurance plan recently. I can't say I know how prevalent this is through other plans, but it tells me that there would be no co-pay required were the benefits user to contract the COVID-one-niner. I assume a test for the virus must have to come out positive in order for one to take advantage of this break. (Well, no, I don't mean to imply that that'd be a good day, of course!)

What about that test? It says your body has the antibodies that fight this Kung Flu, right? That does not really mean that whatever you go to the doctor or hospital for MUST BE due to this particular virus. Do the conditions that require medical attention have to be exact symptoms of the Kung Flu? As per the last post, if you get hauled in to the ER in an ambulance due to having driven drunk into an Oak tree, and you test positive for the Kung Flu, I guess that waives the co-pay. (Again, it's still not a good day, but, hey, after they patch you up, you may still have that money left for another Trans-Am.)

I really wonder if deals like this will make doctors more likely to chalk up deaths or ICU stays to the COVID-one-niner, rather than anything else at all. After all, the health care field in America is a complete pain-in-the-ass on the business end. Who wants to try to round up the next of kin to collect that co-pay? On the patients' side, the incentive is even more clear-cut.

This is just conjecture, I admit here. In order to get more publicity and more power from the ability to scare the livin' Bejesus out of the country, there is an incentive to log in deaths as from the Kung Flu, when these deaths may just have happened with the Kung Flu. Could this insurance thing be another incentive?




* Were it truly another form of insurance only, and not a big controlling factor in how the health care field operated in America, we'd be much better off.

Comments:
Moderator
Friday - April 17th 2020 2:01PM MST
PS: Thank you for that information, Bill H. If you have any sort of link, I'll put your info up into this post - just more evidence of a substantial incentive to goose the numbers.
Bill H
Friday - April 17th 2020 9:54AM MST
PS No, the test has not been for antibodies. That test is only now beginning to become available. The test is not for the virus itself, either, since viruses are too small to detect with anything lesser than an electron microscope. The test is for electrolytes produced by the virus.

Yes, insurance is jacking up the count enormously. NYC added 3700 deaths to the count in one day for bodies that had not even been tested for the virus. All they knew was that they were dead. Cause of death unknown, but presumed to be due to Corona virus. Please note that Medicare pays up to $39,000 of medical expenses when cause of death is Corona vires.
Moderator
Thursday - April 16th 2020 9:09AM MST
PS: Robert, first off, I'm glad you are OK now and commenting here. Yes, the whole business side of health care is f__d up beyond belief due the US government's getting involved way back. If you click the posts here on the system that I observed in China, you can read some of my thoughts about China vs. old America vs. modern America.

I have been through that dealing with doctors' and hospital's offices without insurance before too. At one place (too long a story for this comment) I told the billing guy directly on the phone - after I'd paid $250 or so out of a $1,300 for 1/2 hour behind the counter at the ER for no treatment, just a consultation - "Hey, man, that's enough money. We can't be paying for all the illegal aliens in there too." He seemed offended. I didn't care a whit.
Moderator
Thursday - April 16th 2020 7:22AM MST
PS: Yeah, Mr. Hail without a test, all bets are off! My wife told me about an on-line assessment that I should take (I think that's when the pollen level was high). I looked at it - "this is just what might get you to come in and see the Doctor. This is not any kind of proof." Do you think that's all they are using.

From your anecdote, I am curious now if you are in the medical field. For anonymity's sake, if I don't get an answer, I won't be sore about it, trust me.
Robert
Thursday - April 16th 2020 12:39AM MST
PS: OK, I have never understood health 'insurance'. In the late '80s I tried to get catastrophic health insurance --- basically limited coverage, a (very) large deductible, but cheap monthly rates. No --- The Feds said I needed to be insured against this and that including both abortion and fertility treatments! No cheap insurance for basically healthy people in their late '20s.

Later (2010s), when I had a stroke (a blood vessel in my brain popped, and I had a walnut sized blood clot) I had very good insurance (I was a gummint employee) the (multiple) bills were 'reduced' from the low 6 digits to the mid four digits, of which I owed less that $200 among them. For this I am grateful, since I couldn't even sit up on my own at the beginning, let alone walk.

What these reductions were, and how they were negotiated was not clear.

A couple of years later, when I had lost my insurance, and had suddenly been having some serious walking/balance issues, I went to the emergency rooms. I told them that I had had a cold (could plugged up ears cause this?), but given my previous stroke was concerned. They sent me a bill for several 10s of thousands.

Since I still had the older bills, I offered to pay them at twice the insured rates for the CAT scans and such, but they refused. They got nothing, and my credit rating tanked.

There is something going on with medical practice, rationing, and billing, that I do not understand.
Hail
Wednesday - April 15th 2020 10:24PM MST
PS --

There are videos circulating on social media of people who were, by their telling, immediately diagnosed COVID without being given any test at all.

One I saw had a Black female patient in her 20s or so. She was agitated, having then-recently been told she was losing her liberty for two weeks, at least. She waves the paper at the camera that reads COVID. She relates how she protested, why wasn't she given the test. In her telling, the doctor says: "You have the symptoms that match COVID, we don't need a test." Their file was marked COVID and she was put under mandatory quarantine.

And the hospital adds another tally mark.

"Ka-CHING!"
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