The initial comment was made by Minnesota State Sen. Scott Jensen, a family physician, who
spoke with Fox News host Laura Ingraham on April 8 about the idea that the number of COVID-19 deaths may be inflated. Jensen was responding to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, who — while answering a reporter’s question about that theory —
said “you will always have conspiracy theories when you have very challenging public health crises. They are nothing but distractions.”
Jensen, April 8: I would remind him that anytime health care intersects with dollars it gets awkward. Right now Medicare has determined that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital, you’ll get paid $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator, you get $39,000, three times as much. Nobody can tell me after 35 years in the world of medicine that sometimes those kinds of things impact on what we do.
In an interview with FactCheck.org, however, Jensen said he did not think that hospitals were intentionally misclassifying cases for financial reasons.