Coronavirus (insurance, house, allergies)

[njbiodude]

Originally Posted by suzy_q2010

If a patient is admitted for another reason and tests positive for covid, that generates the need for isolation and additional personnel to care for that patient, even if he has no symptoms. That costs more for the hospital to provide. It is only Medicare patients who get the additional 20% payments.

The hospital does not get more money if the patient dies. It gets paid only for care provided while the patient is alive.

The funeral home should not be getting more than it would for the same services for a non-covid death. The "free" money is for the benefit of the family of the deceased.

Isolation of covid patients ended a while ago in many places.

That cancer story was actually someone I knew; they caught Covid while being treated for cancer. Their symptoms were negligible from the Covid but the cancer was bad and they had chemo and surgery. Eventually they were discharged but according to them the overall care didn't change. 20% more for another Covid case?

[suzy_q2010]

Originally Posted by njbiodude

Isolation of covid patients ended a while ago in many places.

That cancer story was actually someone I knew; they caught Covid while being treated for cancer. Their symptoms were negligible from the Covid but the cancer was bad and they had chemo and surgery. Eventually they were discharged but according to them the overall care didn't change. 20% more for another Covid case?

Failure to isolate someone with SARS-CoV-2 infection would be really bad infection control policy.

I can find no evidence that hospitals are not isolating covid patients. Here is the policy on discontinuing isolation for one major hospital system:

https://infectioncontrol.ucsfmedical..._Isolation.pdf

The person you know was high risk for progression to severe disease and for prolonged shedding of the virus, which increases the risk of developing a new variant with multiple mutations. The link has information on immunosuppressed patients.

[1AngryTaxPayer]

Originally Posted by suzy_q2010

Your thinking it was widespread does not mean it happened.

DH and I did not get any "Biden bucks."

You got zero covid relief money? If you didn't, you'd be the first I have heard of. You must be extremely wealthy.

[1AngryTaxPayer]

Originally Posted by joosoon

I'm not going to get into whether or not there were nefarious plots to bilk the system (which wouldn't be shocking), but it's not entirely unbelievable that cases/deaths were unintentionally over-reported at one point, as they're now believed to be under-reported. Without going into the deep details, a long while back I related a story here of a family member who tested positive when only "official" testing offered by the county was available. It turned out to be a false positive too but the county wasn't bothering to correct those numbers from the aggregate at the time and I'll wager that's never changed. So what are the chances that happened to only one person that I happen to know? I've never won the lottery, so...



That incident alone has driven my doubts about the data being gathered in general, especially during the triage era immediately following the March 2020 shutdown. A good example of this was the global reporting which for a long time showed countries in the developing world doing an outstanding job of controlling spread and suppressing deaths. But we all know better (I hope) that those were simply a matter of undercounting everything, by way of just not counting anything.


tl;dr - Data is only as good as those collecting it.

You know it. GIGO. I would have been embarrassed to publish those numbers after the first six months. It was nothing but a train wreck. Someone getting into a wreck on a motorcycle and catching covid in the Hospital shouldn't qualify for death by covid but it was happening. Takes care of those funeral costs with that free money.

[CA4Now]

Sobering information for Los Angeles County residents.

L.A. County’s latest weekly COVID-19 death rate is more than 70% higher than the rate in the Bay Area.

The two regions’ death rates had been more close to each other through parts of June. But something changed in July, and there was a dramatic rise in L.A. County’s death rate not matched by that in the Bay Area.

https://www.latimes.com/california/s...-so-much-worse

[CA4Now]

Originally Posted by njbiodude

Im sure some funeral homes got aboard the free money train.

I've read only about those who qualified for reimbursement of funeral expenses having a lot of hoops to jump through.

Few eligible families have sought federal payment of COVID funeral expenses:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-...covid-funerals

[suzy_q2010]

Originally Posted by 1AngryTaxPayer

You got zero covid relief money? If you didn't, you'd be the first I have heard of. You must be extremely wealthy.

Comfortable, but not extremely wealthy.

[njbiodude]

Originally Posted by CA4Now

Sobering information for Los Angeles County residents.

L.A. County’s latest weekly COVID-19 death rate is more than 70% higher than the rate in the Bay Area.

The two regions’ death rates had been more close to each other through parts of June. But something changed in July, and there was a dramatic rise in L.A. County’s death rate not matched by that in the Bay Area.

https://www.latimes.com/california/s...-so-much-worse

I was in Santa Cruz today in packed resturaunts and arcades and maybe <5% had masks on indoors. If it's lower than LA county its certainly not because everyone is being more "cautious" or wearing masks religiously. However, it's possible many "Bay Area residents" that "work in tech" are residing elsewhere most or all of the week due to illimitable work from home policies and being counted elsewhere when they show up at an urgent care clinic in Lake Tahoe looking for Paxlovid.

[njbiodude]

Originally Posted by suzy_q2010

Failure to isolate someone with SARS-CoV-2 infection would be really bad infection control policy.

I can find no evidence that hospitals are not isolating covid patients. Here is the policy on discontinuing isolation for one major hospital system:

https://infectioncontrol.ucsfmedical..._Isolation.pdf

The person you know was high risk for progression to severe disease and for prolonged shedding of the virus, which increases the risk of developing a new variant with multiple mutations. The link has information on immunosuppressed patients.

.

They moved the patient to another ward and continued the same treatment. They weren't in the ICU, merely recovering in a "covid positive" section of the hospital.

[suzy_q2010]

Originally Posted by njbiodude

.

They moved the patient to another ward and continued the same treatment. They weren't in the ICU, merely recovering in a "covid positive" section of the hospital.

That means they were isolated from uninfected patients.