Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D., & Ali Shultz note patients are ‘virtual prisoners’ to protocols
Note: Ali Shultz, J.D., contributed to this column. Dr. Vliet is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, AAPS.
Upon admission to a once-trusted hospital, American patients with COVID-19 become virtual prisoners, subjected to a rigid treatment protocol with roots in Ezekiel Emanuel’s “Complete Lives System” for rationing medical care in those over age 50. These patients have a shockingly high mortality rate. How and why is this happening, and what can be done about it?
As exposed in audio recordings, hospital executives in Arizona admitted meeting several times a week to lower standards of care, with coordinated restrictions on visitation rights. Most COVID-19 patients’ families are deliberately kept in the dark about what is really being done to their loved ones.
The combination that enables this tragic and avoidable loss of hundreds of thousands of lives includes 1) The CARES Act, which provides hospitals with bonus incentive payments for all things related to COVID-19 (testing, diagnosing, admitting to hospital, use of remdesivir and ventilators, reporting COVID-19 deaths, and vaccinations), and 2) waivers of customary and long-standing patient rights by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
In 2020, the Texas Hospital Association submitted requests for waivers to CMS. According to Texas attorney Jerri Ward, “CMS has granted ‘waivers’ of federal law regarding patient rights. Specifically, CMS purports to allow hospitals to violate the rights of patients or their surrogates with regard to medical record access, to have patient visitation, and to be free from seclusion.” She notes that “rights do not come from the hospital or CMS and cannot be waived, as that is the antithesis of a ‘right.’ The purported waivers are meant to isolate and gain total control over the patient and to deny patient and patient’s decision-maker the ability to exercise informed consent.”
Creating a “National Pandemic Emergency” provided justification for such sweeping actions that override individual physician medical decision-making and patients’ rights. The CARES Act provides incentives for hospitals to use treatments dictated solely by the federal government under the auspices of the NIH. These “bounties” must paid back if not “earned” by making the COVID-19 diagnosis and following the COVID-19 protocol.
The hospital payments include:
- A “free” required PCR test in the Emergency Room or upon admission for every patient, with a fee to hospital by federal government.
- Added bonus payment for each positive COVID-19 diagnosis.
- Another bonus for a COVID-19 admission to the hospital.
- A 20% “boost” bonus payment from Medicare on the entire hospital bill for the use of remdesivir instead of other medicines, such as ivermectin.
- Another and larger bonus payment to the hospital if a COVID-19 patient is mechanically ventilated.
- More money to the hospital if cause of death is listed as COVID-19, even if patient did not die directly of COVID-19.
- A COVID-19 diagnosis also provides extra payments to coroners.
CMS implemented “value-based” payment programs that track data such as how many workers at a health care facility have received a COVID-19 vaccine. Now we see why many hospitals implemented COVID-19 vaccine mandates. They are paid more.
Outside the hospital, physician MIPS (Merit-based Incentive Payment System) quality metrics link doctors’ income to performance-based pay for treating patients with COVID-19 EUA drugs. Failure to report this information to CMS can cost the physician 4% of reimbursement.
Because of obfuscation with medical coding and legal jargon, we cannot be certain of the actual amount each hospital receives per COVID-19 patient. But Attorney Thomas Renz and CMS whistleblowers have calculated a total payment of at least $100,000 per patient.
What does this mean for your health and safety as a patient in the hospital?
Koenig International News senior analyst Bill Wilson wrote in the Nov. 2 Daily Jot, “A December 12, 2019 article in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded that the use of remdesivir in treating patients during the 2018 West African Ebola outbreak had to be discontinued ‘because mortality exceeded 50%.’ Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control published studies indicate a range of 71-75% adverse events caused by remdesivir (including liver and kidney damage), and many of the studies documented that remdesivir treatment had to be discontinued after 5-10 days because of adverse events or even worse, death.”
In ventilated patients, the death toll is staggering. A National Library of Medicine January 2021 report of 69 studies involving more than 57,000 patients concluded that fatality rates were 45% in COVID-19 patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation, increasing to 84% in older patients. Renz announced at a Truth for Health Foundation Press Conference that CMS data showed that in Texas hospitals, 84.9% percent of all patients died after more than 96 hours on a ventilator.
Then there are deaths from restrictions on effective treatments for hospitalized patients. Renz and a team of data analysts have estimated that more than 800,000 deaths in America’s hospitals, in COVID-19 and other patients, have been caused by approaches restricting fluids, nutrition, antibiotics, effective antivirals, anti-inflammatories and therapeutic doses of anti-coagulants.
We now see government-dictated medical care at its worst in our history since the federal government mandated these ineffective and dangerous treatments for COVID-19, and then created financial incentives for hospitals and doctors to use only those “approved” (and paid for) approaches.
Our formerly trusted medical community of hospitals and hospital-employed medical staff have effectively become “bounty hunters” for your life. Patients need to now take unprecedented steps to avoid going into the hospital for COVID-19.
Patients need to take active steps to plan before getting sick to use early home-based treatment of COVID-19 that can help you save your life.
Co-contributor attorney Ali Shultz, J.D., is founder of Hands for Health and Freedom (www.HandsforHealthandFreedom.org) and also serves on the Legal Advisory Council of Truth for Health Foundation with the COVID Care Strategy Team assisting families of hospitalized COVID patients being denied effective treatment.
