involved for the hospital for taking care of COVID patients....where's there's money there's fraud, or in this case "a particularly advantageous way for the health system to present the data...."
assigning the cause of death is, and has always been, flawed...before and after COVID....Very few elderly patients die without competing causes of mortality...at some point, a physician or coder gets to choose what goes on the death certificate...and signs it...then it becomes gospel, and a permanent part of the record....we don't do autopsies anymore...
if you had 6 diagnosis' in your medical record, all that could cause death, which one do you choose...? the worst one...? the most recent one...? the one at the very end...? so it's always been "captain obvious" to state "respiratory failure" or "cardiac failure"....that's why these causes of death appear the most frequently...