Trump reportedly thinks the US coronavirus death count is being inflated by hospitals who want a COVID-19 bonus from Medicare

• President Donald Trump reportedly believes that the US coronavirus death count is being exaggerated, Axios reported Wednesday, citing unnamed senior administration officials.
• The sources said the president and some of his aides believe that hospitals may be misdiagnosing patients with the coronavirus to get a 20% bonus from Medicare.
• Medicare is offering the bonus to hospitals treating coronavirus patients because they have had to postpone a lot of the normal care that contributes to a health system's revenue.
• Misdiagnosing a patient is fraud, and there is no public evidence to show hospitals have been abusing this system.
• However, experts believe that the coronavirus death toll is being underreported, if anything.
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President Donald Trump reportedly believes that the coronavirus death toll is being exaggerated, Axios reported Wednesday.

Two senior administration officials told the outlet that Trump shares the belief with others in his administration that hospitals may be misdiagnosing patients with coronavirus to get extra money from Medicare.

Medicare is currently offering a 20% bonus for coronavirus patients, because hospitals have had to pause a lot of their other routine care and procedures that bring in revenue.

Dr. Scott Jensen, a physician and Minnesota senator, had suggested to Fox News' Laura Ingraham in early April that this was a possible "avenue" to securing more Medicare funds, and that administrators may feel the pressure to diagnose run-of-the-mill pneumonia cases as coronavirus because of it.

There is no public evidence that hospitals have been abusing this system, USA Today reported.

Misdiagnosing a patient is fraud, and while no one in the administration has publicly leveled that accusation, a senior official told Axios he expects the president to start speaking publicly soon about his misgivings with the data.

Experts say that if anything, the coronavirus death toll is being underreported because many people are dying without being tested, and some states are not counting "probable" coronavirus deaths in their totals. Coroners have even been asking for test kits to get more accurate coronavirus numbers on the dead.

As of Thursday, there were more than 1.2 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the US, in addition to 73,431 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

It marks yet another example of Trump disagreeing with experts during the outbreak, from his recent speculation that the virus could just "disappear" to his constant pushing of a theory that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab.

Business Insider reached out to the White House for comment on the Axios report on Thursday morning, but did not immediately receive a response.

A senior White House official defended the president's thinking to Axios.

"Skepticism isn't the right way to frame it. The numbers have been revised up to include presumptive cases — meaning deaths that are believed to be related to COVID but not known for sure," the official said.

"So he's expressed the need to properly convey that to American people so they're not startled by why numbers ticked up."

The Axios report follows an analysis from The Washington Post on Monday that pointed to how Fox News pundits and Trump allies were beginning to question the coronavirus numbers in an attempt to defend the president's handling of the crisis.

In one example, Fox News analyst Brit Hume pushed a theory for an inflated death count, saying people with underlying conditions who die quickly after contracting coronavirus may have been killed by their own previous issues rather than the disease.

But Dr. Deborah Birx, one of the leading physicians advising the Trump administration during the outbreak, said that idea was wrong.

"Those individuals will have an underlying condition, but that underlying condition did not cause their acute death when it's related to a COVID infection," Birx said. "In fact, it's the opposite."