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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

> hospitals faking COVID test results just so that they can admit them for 4 days, administer expensive drugs, charge them some hefty bill, and send home

Why would hospitals admit someone who isn't actually in need of care? If you need hospital care for Covid, it's (almost exclusively) because you need supplemental oxygen, and that's something that's pretty hard to fake.

Edit: the question is: how are these hospitalizations actually done practically. Are doctors faking diagnoses (e.g. hypoxia), convincing patients they need care, which they are persuaded to accept? Or are patients forcibly admitted without being asked?

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Blunt answer : Money, greed, short term thinking and lack of ethics.

How? Doctors turn into actors and cheat the public. Anecdotally, my relatives say they were never treated for COVID, but told that they needed admission because they have high risks(diabetes, respiratory troubles, high blood pressure) and need to be monitored in order to make sure COVID is treated early. After 4 days of a battery of tests(non COVID related), they are sent home saying they escaped the wrath of COVID because they were lucky. I don’t know what to say.

This is why I'd never want to visit any doctor whose paycheck is affected by the treatment he gives (or doesn't).

A doctor who has even a small kickback on prescriptions from a pharmaceutical company is completely out of the question in my book at least.

> Why would hospitals admit someone who isn't actually in need of care?

In places without socialized medical coverage and low levels of ethical integrity (unfortunately, too many places in the world - especially impoverished states), the answer is "money".

Yes perhaps the question was unclearly posed, I mean - how do people allow themselves to be admitted to expensive care without being in need of it?

Are doctors "persuading" patients that they need care, and the problem is lack of information about what rights you have to actually refuse, or information about what the symptoms would be etc?

Yep that's usually what happens. Not everyone has the same access to basic medical information and rely solely on the doctor's word. That is how many people fall into cult-like or religious "medicine" or end up spending way too much on otherwise farsical treatment.

Why would socialized medicine exclude this behavior? Medicare fraud in the US is in the billions.

The US does not have socialised medicine.

I believe parent referred to Medicare as a subset in American health care that is socialized, to some degree.

I guess I am mostly alone in thinking that for a system to be socialised, it has to apply to everyone or almost everyone in a country equally. From the comments and the voting, I understand that having it apply to "almost" half the population is already socialised to this time slot :)

So by your definition much of Europe (which has a robust private healthcare system) isn’t socialized?

Europe isn't a country and doesn't have uniform policies in this way. It also doesn't have things as an entity (except for a selection of laws that it's members implement differently in most cases).

Because of those facts, I have trouble even formulating a response to your question - it doesn't make sense to me.

Much of Europe has a mix of public and private healthcare, hence by your argument, none of those countries have socialized medicine.

We do, just for certain groups, such as elderly and the poor. Hell like 40% of births here are paid for by medicaid. But we have system here where only up to upper middle class (~$142k) of income is paid to social security tax, so middle class pays for both poor and themselves, while poor pays for no one and rich disproportionately only pay for themselves.

There is no income limit on Medicare payroll taxes, just social security.

Agreed, although that doesn't negate the presence of socialized health care.

Yes, but at least there is more equity between poor and rich in this regard.

More like equity between middle class and rich. The poor are getting free stuff at expense of both.

The rich have more because they have more money, giving poor people free stuff actually increases equity, it doesn’t decrease it. SS isn’t very equitable because of the income limits, payroll taxes in general are less equitable because they aren’t (very) progressive.

One person being handed health care on a silver platter while I work the better part of a week to pay for it for my family doesn't sound equitable to me.

You are assuming the poor in America aren't working hard and are having health care handed to them on a silver platter, neither of which is true in general. But sure, many poor people (who don't qualify for Medicaid) are looking forward to the day they turn 65 and can get healthcare benefits...hoping that they live that long enough to see any of that.

Of all the developed countries, only America treats its non-rich citizens so harshly. Your implied advice that poor people should "just work harder and make more money!" isn't very useful.

Resorting to a bunch of straw-man attacks making lying and vicious, calculated claims to make me look like I've attacked the poor as "not working hard" is a really bad look for you. It's the look of someone who failed at making a cogent argument so they resort to a sob story about me attacking the poor.

All I'm saying is it isn't equitable for one person (who could have not worked a day in their life) to be handed health care on a silver platter while I work the better part of a week to pay for it for my family. Do you not understand many on public health care don't have to work for the better part of a week to receive benefits, and never have? I'm not talking about old people who spent 40 years paying into the system.

The person you replied to was being generous to your argument, and nothing but polite. The fact is that plenty of the "poor" work as much as you do, but you think they're somehow enslaving you because you get paid more.

If you continued working the same job you have now, but at $7.50/hr, would it be fair to characterize your receiving the same health care you receive now as being handed to you on a silver platter?

>The person you replied to was being generous to your argument, and nothing but polite.

And nothing says generous and polite by making the lying, vicious claim that I've assumed ' the poor in America aren't working hard' and that I implied 'that poor people should just work harder and make more money!' It's purely fiction designed to paint me as the evil denigrator of the poor.

>The fact is that plenty of the "poor" work as much as you do, but you think they're somehow enslaving you because you get paid more.

'The fact' that both of you have to put words in my mouth (or alleged thoughts) to make your argument speaks volumes here.

>If you continued working the same job you have now, but at $7.50/hr, would it be fair to characterize your receiving the same health care you receive now as being handed to you on a silver platter?

By handed on a silver platter I was referring to someone capable of working, but who requests (and is handed) health care for free without performing any labor at all at the expense of someone working and paying an involuntary tax. I never said that was all or even most poor. I'm not referring to the poor person making 7.50 buying their own private health insurance. There's probably an argument from some perspective that 'equitable' could mean everyone works the same amount of labor (20 hours or whatever) per month to pay for healthcare, although I'm not sure even that would precisely be equitable. One able bodied person of equal insurance risk pool to another working BOTH more hours AND paying more for same insurance would certainly sound inequitable.

You said:

> One person being handed health care on a silver platter while I work the better part of a week to pay for it for my family doesn't sound equitable to me. reply

This exactly implies that if only those poor people worked a "better part of a week to pay for it" like you did, they wouldn't be getting their health care served on a silver platter. Not a straw man.

The straw man is that I've assumed ' the poor in America aren't working hard' and that I implied 'that poor people should just work harder and make more money!'

Of course if you compensate providers for health care through the fruit of your labor and investments, you've earned it and it hasn't been provided to you on a silver platter; I don't think anyone is disputing that.

>This exactly implies that if only those poor people worked a "better part of a week to pay for it" like you did, they wouldn't be getting their health care served on a silver platter.

See my response below:

A large subset of the US does have socialized medicine. Medicare (65 million people), Medicaid (75 million people), and the military health system (10 million people).

That’s nearly half the US population.

That insurance isn't socialized medicine. In Europe for example, the hospital is owned by the government/state/etc, the doctors are hired directly by the hospital, the medicine costs are directly set by the state and so on.

No private parties at all.

> In Europe for example, the hospital is owned by the government/state/etc,

Europe is a big place with many different types of systems. What you're describing sounds like the UK. But places like NL[1] or DE[2] are more like Medicare/aid for all (basic coverage) + Obamacare (mandatory private insurance, sometimes supplementary). The providers may be private practitioners.

NB: I'm not an expert in these systems so I may have gotten some details wrong. My main point is that "European healthcare" isn't a monolith and it's not all state-owned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_the_Netherlands

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Germany

The key word is fraud: getting something for nothing. Medicare itself bills at a lower rate than private insurance. For many doctors and hospitals, Medicare can be a margin-reducing annoyance. The private insurance patients are where the moneys at.

Fraud being changed for unneeded services?

Not sure what your point is.

That kind of fraud can occur because you have a socialized system interfacing with a non-socialized one. The government is paying the costs, but they don’t actually have much control over or oversight of the care. It is not like Australia where the government is all in by funding the hospitals and doctors directly.

https://www.counterfraud.gov.au/case-studies/clinic-owner-co...

”A medical clinic owner defrauded the Commonwealth of more than $3.3 million by claiming rebates for services not given to over 5,870 different patients.”

He got caught very quickly, I’m not sure what this proves (that idiots exist in every country?).

You claimed it doesn’t happen in Australia and I proved it does.

Why are you moving goal posts?

This is like a Trump supporter claiming that the Democrats stole the election because a bunch of Trump voters got caught voting illegally, very easily because...the system actually works. Here, yes, you can still commit fraud in Australia, but your chances of getting caught quickly are almost 100%.

You provided no source to back that up. You’re saying a doctor who orders an extra unnecessary test will get caught 100% of the time?

Clearly fantasy.

As an Indian living in India, I've heard some of these stories:

a. They are asked to get admitted "for observation because they are at high risk". If they ask to leave, the doctors ask them to sign a very scary sounding wavier disclaiming the hospital of responsibility for their death.

b. There apparently this one lab that will return a positive covid test if the docs ask them to and they get a cut of what the patient pays.

It needs to be said that I don't know if any of these are true.

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