NEWS AND OPINION
Our ruling: True
We rate the claim that hospitals get paid more if patients are listed as COVID-19 and on ventilators as TRUE.
Hospitals and doctors do get paid more for Medicare patients diagnosed with COVID-19 or if it's considered presumed they have COVID-19 absent a laboratory-confirmed test, and three times more if the patients are placed on a ventilator to cover the cost of care and loss of business resulting from a shift in focus to treat COVID-19 cases.
This higher allocation of funds has been made possible under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act through a Medicare 20% add-on to its regular payment for COVID-19 patients, as verified by USA TODAY through the American Hospital Association Special Bulletin on the topic.
"It bugs me to see these restrictions on people being outside," said Edward Nardell, a professor in the departments of Environmental Health and Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Nardell told Slate that he favors opening the beaches, so long as social distancing rules are put in place and enforced.
And no beach has reopened in Florida without social distancing guidelines. Jacksonville, the first city to open the proverbial floodgates, has banned sunbathing and prohibited beachgoers from bringing coolers, grills, and chairs. Organized beach sports are also forbidden. Put differently, you are allowed to walk or jog on the beach, and you are allowed to go swimming.
Let us start with the facts about COVID-19. First, it is highly contagious. Second, a very large percentage of those infected are asymptomatic. Third, precisely because it is highly contagious and many cases are asymptomatic, infection will continue to spread until a vaccine becomes available or herd immunity is reached. Government actions, such as lockdowns, contact tracing, mandatory social distancing and the like, will not influence the total number of people who are ultimately infected; they only influence how many people have an active infection at a given point in time. All of these actions “flatten the curve,” but they do not affect the area under the curve.
Fourth, no one knows the infection mortality rate from COVID-19. But there is broad agreement that the number is substantially lower than the 3.4 percent initially published by the World Health Organization, which only included symptomatic cases in the numerator. Indeed, the higher the percentage of asymptomatic cases, the lower must be the infection mortality rate.
Disney chairman Bob Iger, who recently stepped down as CEO but retains a highly active management role in the company, says he has an optimistic outlook nonetheless.
“What we create has never been more necessary or more important than right now,” he said at the start of the company’s earnings call. “In fact, it’s quite possible that what we create is appreciated now more than ever because people find comfort and inspiration in our messages of hope and optimism. This is the same reason we believe people will resume familiar activities once this crisis ends. They missed doing the things they enjoy, things that make them feel happy and connected with family and friends.”
Bureaucracy kills. Much of the fight against the coronavirus has also involved a fight against bureaucrats dead set on making things worse. Early on, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared COVID-19 a public health emergency, which raised the bar for testing requirements. As a result, hospitals and universities faced significant barriers to getting alternative tests approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Worse yet, the CDC tests turned out to be defective.
As James R. Copland writes, this wasn’t political interference, but the work of professional bureaucrats: “The botched regulatory response in the United States owed little to the choices of political actors. The individuals running the FDA and CDC are experts in their field, not hacks.” Even distilleries that wanted to switch to making hand sanitizer, to alleviate deadly shortages in health care facilities and other institutions, were slowed by the FDA. Fixing things has required a lot of regulations to be overturned or suspended; hopefully we’ll think long and hard before reinstating them after the crisis is over.
First: the virus will not be contained. The chance for containment has long passed. The virus transmits before people know they have it and many patients never develop symptoms. It will be with us until an effective vaccine is both widely available and widely used. (See #6)
Second: Tests will under-perform. The high rate of asymptomatic disease, the low sensitivity of PCR tests (false negatives), imperfect specificity of antibody tests (false positives) and concerns over privacy mean that we should expect less from test and trace–even if proposed by a Nobel Laureate. Carl Bergstrom and others write persuasively on major barriers to contact tracing in the US.
Third: US hospitals are now prepared and in little danger of being over-whelmed. In fact, many hospitals are so dormant they are nearing financial ruin. Healthcare workers have been furloughed due to postponement of elective work. I’ve talked to numerous colleagues in the US and the message is clear: hospitals are under-capacity and prepared for a “persistent” number of COVID19 cases during the coming months/years. Hospitals now have COVID response teams.
Germany is planning an almost complete return to normality in May, with schools and shops reopening and the return of top-flight Bundesliga football matches, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday.
All schools and shops will now be able to open as long as they observe hygiene and social distancing rules, with the Bundesliga resuming behind closed doors, Merkel said after a meeting with the leaders of Germany's 16 states.
The Treasury Department said Wednesday it plans to ramp up auction sizes of longer-dated securities and will issue a new 20-year bond at an initial offering of $20 billion, much larger than Wall Street analysts were expecting.
The government’s borrowing needs have increased substantially as Congress authorizes trillions in new spending to combat the coronavirus pandemic. The Treasury officials estimated Monday they would borrow a record $2.99 trillion in the second quarter, more than five times as much as quarterly borrowing during the height of the 2008-09 financial crisis...
“Even after the deficit updraft became obvious, most expected the new 20-year to see an introductory size in the teens,” said Jim Vogel, an interest-rate strategist at FHN Financial. “Many saw in the low teens, but instead it’s christened at $20 billion.”
The move surprised many on Wall Street, sending Treasury yields jumping as traders assessed the growing deficits and details around future issuance. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note climbed to 0.709%, according to Tradeweb, up from 0.656% on Tuesday, while the yield on the 30-year bond rose to 1.412% compared with the prior close of 1.330%.
Debt traders and investors care about how much the Treasury borrows through the 20-year bond because it is likely to affect trading in other maturities too.
“The 20-year is going to cannibalize demand for other securities, particularly the 30-year bond and 10-year Treasury note,” said Jay Barry, head of USD government bond strategy at JPMorgan, in an interview Tuesday...
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last month it expects the annual U.S. deficit to total $3.7 trillion in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, roughly 18% as a share of gross domestic product, the highest since the end of World War II and nearly quadruple last year’s deficit.
To meet the borrowing needs, the Treasury said Monday it expects to issue a record $4.5 trillion in new debt by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, compared with $1.28 trillion in fiscal 2019.
Health care workers that came to New York to help fight the coronavirus pandemic at its epicenter will have to pay state taxes, according to the governor.
...Even though the state government asked thousands of people to come to New York from out of state to help fight coronavirus, they will have to pay New York state taxes, even on income they might make from their home states that they're paid while in New York.
...Any out-of-state resident who's come to the Empire State to work on coronavirus relief is subject to the tax after 14 days here.
There are thousands of emergency workers here who've responded to requests by Cuomo and Mayor Bill De Blasio for help. Many of them are collecting paychecks from companies back in their home states, which allowed them to come to New York to volunteer.
Congressional leaders have once again failed to require rigorous oversight over the White House’s pandemic response, increasing the risk that some very wealthy pigs at the trough will continue elbowing aside near-bankrupt small businesses in desperate need of help.
Like the previous $350-billion iteration, the new Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) relief bill passed by Congress this week fails to protect small businesses with bolstered transparency and oversight around the program’s funding. The continued lack of protections should worry small business owners.
THE ECONOMY
Misguided Promise of Restored Prosperity Through Paternalism
In other words, there are all those in political authority, among declared scientific “elites,” and among the social and mass media intelligentsia who are adamant that they know what is best for others, and merely wish to protect those others from their own mindless mistakes that easily could harm themselves and those around them.
As part of this pervasive political paternalism there has been emerging discussions about how to return to full employment, restored and growing standards of living, the role of government in the post-coronavirus era in terms of more expansive and intrusive regulation and redistribution, and the general type of society that is wanted when the pandemic has come to an end or significantly subsided.
Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Richard Clarida mixed a sobering acknowledgment of the damage inflicted on the U.S. economy by the coronavirus pandemic with an optimistic outlook for the second half of the year.
“We’re living through the most severe contraction in activity and surge in unemployment that we’ve seen in our lifetimes,” Clarida said Tuesday in an interview on CNBC television. “But recovery could begin in the second half of the year, and that today is my forecast.”
The United States and Britain launched formal negotiations on a free trade agreement on Tuesday, vowing to work quickly to seal a deal that could counter the massive drag of the coronavirus pandemic on trade flows and the two allies’ economies.
