Thread by @Villgecrazylady

THREAD: Stick with me, I promise it’ll be worth it.

On Wednesday @RMConservative had Dr. Paul Marik on his podcast to talk about Dr. Marik’s lawsuit against his employer, Sentara Healthcare. Basically, Sentara has told Dr. Marik that he is no longer permitted to treat patients

With the MATH+ Protocol that he (along with hundreds of other doctors) has adopted to treat hospitalized COVID patients. In the course of the interview Dr. Marik mentioned that none of the cheaper drugs in his protocol came with a “bonus” so they weren’t appealing to the hospital

Naturally, this “bonus” caught my attention. Why would any COVID treatment be accompanied with a bonus? Sounds pretty unethical, right? So I asked Uncle Google and sure enough, I come across an article saying that hospitals can receive an extra 20% bonus for using remdesivir

To treat COVID patients. Now I know that a 10 day cycle of remdesivir costs $3000 so I wasn’t too impressed w that $600 bonus. Not saying $600 is nothing, but it’s certainly not anything I’d be willing to go to court over. But then I kept reading… here’s where it gets good…

Last November, when everyone was totally distracted with the election, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) updated its interim final rule with request for comments (IFC) and added a little noticed incentive for hospitals to treat with remdesivir

Hospitals that provide proof of a positive PCR COVID test, who treat with 1 of the 2 drugs that have received EUA from the FDA for inpatient treatment of COVID, not only receive the 20% “new technology” bonus, they also qualify for a whole new system of billing

Normally under Medicaid, hospitals are required to eat the first $30,000 in charges and then Medicaid picks up 80% of everything over that. So if a hospital billed $100,000 Medicaid would pay 80% of $70,000 or $56,000.

But after last November’s IFC, if a patient is Covid positive and is treated with remdesivir, Medicaid will cover 65% of that first $30,000. Which means that $56,000 reimbursement on the 100k bill is now a $75,500 reimbursement.

So that $600 bonus, is actually a $20,000 bonus. Per patient. Just so long as they’re treated with remdesivir. Starting to make sense now?

I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why these hospitals were denying dying patients the chance to try something that might work or taking their doctors to court to stop effective treatments. But in the end, it’s all about money. We’ve always known that.

Here are the links:



Summary from the Health Care Compliance Association

https://t.co/HEz5jlGK7Acms.gov/files/document…
jdsupra.com/legalnews/cms-…