Trump reportedly thinks coronavirus deaths are overcounted. Experts say the opposite.
A senior Trump administration official told Axios he expects President Trump to begin publicly questioning the coronavirus death toll in the United States.
Experts mostly agree the data isn't accurate, but for the opposite reason — the consensus is that deaths are being undercounted, while the official said Trump and some of his aides think the numbers are inflated. There's no evidence the number of fatalities has been exaggerated, but Axios reports Trump wasn't pleased when New York added 3,000 unconfirmed but suspected COVID-19 cases to its tally.
Some on the Trump team reportedly believe hospitals have a financial incentive to identify coronavirus cases since Medicare gives them a 20 percent bonus for COVID-19 treatment, Axios reports. It's unclear if Trump shares this view, and no one in the administration has publicly accused hospitals of misdiagnosing patients.
Other officials told Axios that Trump doesn't think the numbers are fraudulent, but that the lack of "uniform reporting standards in the United States" means the data is murky. That may be true, but again the question among most experts is about how many coronavirus deaths have been missed due to lack of testing, rather than added unnecessarily. Read more at Axios.
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