Matt Judd
You may wonder like me, how a country with as many resources, with enormous wealth, and with supposedly, the World’s best hospitals and most highly trained Doctors and medical staff could fare so badly in the fight against Covid-19 as did the United States.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/
Comparison of one country to another is fraught with confounding variables such as population density, climate, social structure and so on. But given all that, it’s difficult to reconcile its place at number twenty-one, between Belgium and Lithuania. In fact, the next highly developed western nations are Italy and the UK, six places better. It’s also difficult to believe that all of the best scores per capita are held by vastly poor, third world countries (and of course China, who may or may not be reporting truthfully, and who certainly gifted the virus to the world in one way or another.)
A.J DePriest is a Tennessee based researcher and journalist who also runs a patient advocacy service in the state called The Adam Group.
She has been researching how hospitals and federal funding has been working, perhaps inadvertently, to kill thousands, or even many multiples of thousands, of Covid patients. Through the CARES act, the federal government, first under Donald Trump but continued under the current administration, sought to save the hospital system from collapse by creating special income streams for hospital systems. DePriest notes that closing down elective and many general hospital services, early in the pandemic should have caused stock prices for large hospital groups to tank. But in mid-2020, despite many hospitals having most of their most profitable departments suspended, share prices were on the rise.
Although sometimes unavoidable, it is generally accepted for almost any condition, the best treatment is early treatment. How is it then, in many western countries that the standard of care for Covid positive patients is to send them home with some mild fever alleviating drugs like Paracetamol or similar to hope for the best? Then when the patient’s lips turn blue, they get an ambulance ride to the Intensive Care Unit? There is no early treatment, neither in New Zealand nor the States.
In American hospitals, Doctors are encouraged, perhaps even warned, to stick to the NIH or CDC guidelines for Covid treatment.
https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/management/clinical-management/
The CDC guidelines include a link, to the NIH guidelines. Who runs the NIH? Dr Anthony Fauci. Fauci was involved in the development of the only therapeutic (Remdesivir) that has an emergency use authorisation (EUA) for Covid. It is a repurposed drug that was developed to fight Ebola. However, in trials, it was shown to make Ebola patients worse. One of its side effects is kidney failure followed by fluid retention, which starts to clog up the patient’s lungs. Anecdotally, if a Covid patient ends up on mechanical ventilation and is being treated with Remdesivir their chances are fifty fifty at best.
DePriest discovered that American hospitals are incentivised to class a patient as a Covid case, place them on ventilation, and use Remdesivir.
“Tennessee hospitals receive $166,000 for every COVID case.”
Source: Beckers Hospital Review; The Spectator, World Net Daily
Tennessee hospitals receive more money for COVID patients and if COVID patients are on ventilators ($39,000). (Source: USA Today, The Spectator, Politifact, FactCheck.org)
Tennessee hospitals receive even more money for every COVID case based on COVID relief legislation that created a 20 per cent premium (or “add on”) for Medicare patients. (Source: USA Today, Fox News, Healthcare Compliance Association)”
She found that this is not atypical. One of the highest paying states was North Dakota, with figures north of $300,000 US Dollars.
Given that we know, a patient does better if they get treated early (inhaled corticosteroids, fluvoxamine, Vitamin D, Zinc and monoclonal antibodies) if they avoid hospital altogether if they stay off mechanical ventilation at all costs, and that Remdesivir is harmful could someone therefore assume, that perverse incentives have been responsible for a vast number of America’s Covid fatalities? Is there a valuable lesson for the New Zealand health system here?