Hospitals receive a 20% increase in the Medicare payment rate for every patient diagnosed with COVID

…This bolus of payments might help explain why all the large urban hospital systems we checked and the vast majority of smaller systems were still COVID testing all patients. The tests themselves can also be cash generators for hospitals.

Unsurprisingly, the American Hospital Association – a powerful lobbying presence in Washington whose strength has been magnified by the pandemic – sent a letter in March to the head of the Health and Human Services Department petitioning for the extension of the public health emergency.

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