Color me shocked. At the beginning of the pandemic, the government and insurers put several policies in place that made sense to determine disease prevalence, which included widespread testing. Hospitals correctly did preemptive testing to determine the correct infection control protocols to use with individual patients. However, other mandates paired this with perverse financial incentives that provided additional funding for COVID-19 care. The original COVID-19 relief package created a 20% premium that included probable cases and laboratory-confirmed cases for Medicare patients. Several large health insurers also waived copays and coinsurance for care related to COVID-19
.The motives for these reimbursement policies were, in all probability, principled. Hospitals were shut down for many elective and non-emergency procedures, reducing their income. The cost of care for severe COVID-19 in an intensive care unit is also extraordinary. Trying to preserve the health system and insulate families from crippling medical costs was undoubtedly noble. However, being in the hospital with COVID-19 and being in the hospital for COVID-19 are two completely different situations and the reimbursement policies made no distinction.
Public health bureaucrats’ failure to distinguish between being hospitalized with or for COVID-19 and dying with or of the virus undoubtedly cost taxpayers billions of dollars in reimbursement. These statistics were also used on particular cable news channels to stoke panic, extend draconian mitigation methods, and as a political cudgel.
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