Iowa senator falsely suggests COVID-19 deaths may be inflated to make doctors money
Sen. Joni Ernst suggested that the coronavirus death count may be inflated to make health care providers more money.
The Republican from Iowa said during a campaign stop Monday in Black Hawk County that she’s “so skeptical” of the death toll, The Courier reported.
“These health care providers and others are reimbursed at a higher rate if COVID is tied to it, so what do you think they’re doing?” Ernst said.
“They do get reimbursed higher amounts if it’s a COVID-related illness or death,” Ernst told The Courier. “I heard the same thing on the news. … They’re thinking there may be 10,000 or less deaths that were actually singularly COVID-19. … I’m just really curious. It would be interesting to know that.”
Medicaid offers a 20% increase for COVID-19 patients to “address the added cost of treating a challenging new virus,” The Washington Post reported. Doctors have rejected the claim that coronavirus numbers have been inflated by hospitals.
Theresa Greenfield, a Democrat running against Ernst, condemned the comments as “appalling.”
“It’s appalling for you to say you’re ‘so skeptical’ of the toll this pandemic has on our families and communities across Iowa,” she tweeted. “We need leaders who will take this seriously.”
A study by Yale University researchers published in July compared COVID-19 deaths from March 1-May 30 with the number of excess deaths from any cause. They then compared those numbers with deaths from previous years during the same period.
They found the number of excess deaths was around 122,300 higher than last year, which is 28% higher than the confirmed coronavirus deaths. That means the deaths were likely caused by COVID-19 but weren’t attributed.
“Our analyses suggest that the official tally of deaths due to COVID-19 represent a substantial undercount of the true burden,” Dan Weinberger, an epidemiologist at Yale School of Public Health and a lead author of the study, told CNBC in July.
There are more than 6 million confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 185,000 deaths in the U.S. as of Sept. 2, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
When coronavirus cases began to surge in June, President Donald Trump said repeatedly that more cases were attributed to more testing, according to STAT News. Trump said at a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that he’s asked to “slow down the testing, please” and told reporters at a news conference: “When you test, you create cases.”
An analysis by STAT News showed that an increase in cases from mid-May to mid-July was attributed to more testing but in 26 states, the cases surged due to the spread of the virus.
When asked about the coronavirus death toll in August, Trump said in an interview with “Axios on HBO”: “They are dying. That’s true. And you — it is what it is. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it.”
Trump recently retweeted a conspiracy theory claiming that 9,000 people “actually” died from COVID-19, The Hill reported. The tweet, which was later removed by Twitter for violating its rules, highlighted a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention post that said “for 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned.”
The update means 94% of the deaths from coronavirus had at least one other health condition that could have contributed to death, not that they didn’t die from COVID-19.
The CDC estimates the coronavirus was the underlying cause of 95 percent of deaths linked to the virus and in five percent of cases, it was a contributing cause.
People with underlying medical conditions, including cancer, have a higher risk for severe illness from the coronavirus, according to the CDC.
This story was originally published September 2, 2020 at 5:51 PM with the headline "Iowa senator falsely suggests COVID-19 deaths may be inflated to make doctors money."