Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast live from Music Row on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – Leahy was joined on the newsmakers line by the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael.
During the second hour, Carmichael commented on a recent interview with Dr. Scott Jensen of Minnesota who talked about how the CDC was issuing guidelines or requiring doctors to show causes of death to be COVID-19 even if the virus was not the primary cause of death. He also noted that Medicare was reimbursing hospitals $13,000 automatically if a person who checks into the hospital tests positive for COVID-19 and if that patient is put on a ventilator than the reimbursement would be three times higher.
Leahy: We are joined now by our very good friend and the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael. Good morning Crom.
Carmichael: Good morning Michael. How are you, sir?
Leahy: Well, you know, I’m getting a little tired of sheltering at home. (Laughs)
Carmichael: You’ve got two more weeks.
Leahy: Well, nationally it goes to April 30. And here in Tennessee, we are sheltering at home until the 14 next week when the governor is going to make some sort of a decision. We’ll see what he’s going to do.
Carmichael: Oh. OK. That’s right. Trump has un-federalized this which is the right thing to do. Because this is a far more local issue than it is a national issue with the sense that there are certain pockets that seem to be affected much more strongly than others. And so you shouldn’t treat everybody the same when you have some pockets that are worse than others.
Leahy: Exactly the president yesterday Crom in his taskforce press briefing gave a clue as to what his thinking is. He said that the United States needs to be carrying out 750,000 coronavirus tests per week before re-opening the economy. We are actually pretty close to 750,000 a week right now. So I think that the president is moving towards a re-opening either May 1 or perhaps even before. That’s what I’m reading into the tea leaves. How about you?
Carmichael: Well, we’ll see. There are some other interesting data that is coming out and there is a fellow named Dr. Scott Jensen from Minnesota
Leahy: Yes.
Carmichael: Who was on Laura Ingraham’s show. And he said two or three things. One was quite disturbing, and that is that the CDC is issuing guidelines or requiring doctors to show the cause of death to be COVID-19 even if the real cause of death is heart failure or some other malady where COVID-19 is only a contributing factor but not the primary factor.
Leahy: I saw that. I saw that. And in fact, that doctor is also a state senator in Minnesota. That story first appeared on our friend’s program in Fargo, North Dakota Chris Berg. That’s where Laura Ingrahm found out about it. You said there were a couple of other things that this guy mentioned.
Carmichael: Yes. He said that Medicare reimburses hospitals $13,000 automatically if a person who checks into the hospital tests positive for COVID-19. And if that patient is put on a ventilator than Medicare reimburses the hospital $39,000. So now perhaps we understand why Andrew Cuomo (Leahy laughs) wanted 100,000 ventilators for New York.
All he has to do is put people on a ventilator and presto and get $39,000. I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration. As Scott Jensen said there’s a financial reason for hospitals to put people on ventilators. And Dr. Jensen says, unfortunately, we know from all of human history that if you give somebody an incentive that’s large enough they’ll do things that are not necessarily ethical.
The last bit of information comes out of Italy. And that is that they’ve gone back to their National Institute of Health has gone back and examined the deaths of people who had tested positive for COVID-19 in Italy and found that only 12% of the people there who died who had COVID-19 died from COVID-19. And that 88% who had COVID-19 died from other pre-morbidity and many of them had two or three pre-morbidities.
I think what we’re finding is that there are a very very large number of people who perhaps come down with the virus and hardly even know it. And certainly don’t know it to be COVID-19. They may not feel well for a day or two and they may get the sniffles and a couple of other things.
But they don’t even bother to go check. I think that may be what Trump is talking about when he wants to have 750,000 tests ran a week so that we can get some sense as to actual fatality rate from COVID-19 itself as opposed to COVID-19 only being a contributing factor.
Leahy: Crom, I see what I think that can only be described as an ideological battle about to happen between those who want to open up the country in a staged way and I’ll call them the pointed headed academics who want to continue social distancing no matter what the data says. Let me give you a case in point. You know this model out of the University of Washington funded by Bill Gates. The one that said first there will be 240,00 people dead.
Then 100,000. Then 93,000. Now they are down to 60,000. One of the guys behind this model is a guy by the name of Ali Mokdad. That’s his name, Ali Mokdad. He’s one of the guys that did the model. Chris Murray is one of them. He was on Fox last night, and guess what he said?
Now that all of the actual data is coming in far below, particularly for hospitalization. They missed the boat by a factor of six or seven. Now he’s saying, well we’ve been asked to do models of how bad it’s going to be if we don’t continue social distancing. Guess what those models will show OK?
Carmichael: I think you are right in the underlying issue that there’s going to be a political battle
Leahy: Yes.
Carmichael: Going on and the Democrats appear to want to have it both ways. They want to blame the economy on Trump and then they want to blame Trump on anybody who dies.
Leahy: Bingo! That’s exactly right. That’s what they are doing.
Carmichael: There are 10,000 people in the United States alone who die every day and that’s the normal course of things. And so I think it would be entirely appropriate to point out that while Obama and Biden were President close to 350,000 people died every month and they didn’t lift a finger to stop it. They couldn’t have done anything to stop it but we can still blame them for all those deaths.
Leahy: Meanwhile Crom, there is political news going on. President Trump’s ratings are going up. Bernie Sanders is out. And he has nice things to say about Joe Biden.
(Bernie Sanders clip plays)
Joe is a very decent human being. I even know his wife Jill as well. She’s a wonderful person. I hope to be able to work with Joe to move him in a more progressive direction.
Leahy: (Laughs) Move him in a more progressive direction!
Carmichael: Well Joe has shown himself to be completely malleable. Bernie speaks foreknowledge. Biden as you know has said that every illegal immigrant should have free healthcare. He has said he would appoint Beto O’Rourke head of his gun commission. And Beto O’Rourke has said he’ll come and take away everybody’s AR-15.
Biden, of course, thinks it’s the AR-14. (Leahy chuckles) Then the Hyde Amendment which Biden said it was a core belief that would never change. Of course, when it needed to change it changed also. And then he’s also the come on man when it comes to how we should deal with China. And that was back recently as this past May. He ridiculed Trump for claiming that China was now a competitor. And so there are a lot of nice people who are dumb as a fence post.
Leahy: (Laughs) And malleable.
Carmichael: And malleable. If you go back and look at Biden’s history especially on foreign affairs, he may be the only person who’s never been right.
Leahy: (Laughs) He’s continuing that record of never being right. (Laughs)
Carmichael: Yes. How many people do you think there are who at the time of the Obama administration had their chance to take down Osama bin Laden which to Obama’s credit he went ahead and did so even though Biden said don’t do it. I mean how people would urge not to do it when you’ve been looking for the guy for what, 10 years?
Leahy: Well he’ll take that same attitude towards our dealings with China.
Listen to the second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
