PHX Reporter

A physician, who has been a vocal opponent of the nation's COVID-19 vaccination policies, alleged that the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act money came with strings attached at last month’s Arizona Novel Coronavirus Southwestern Intergovernmental Committee hearing. 

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) states on its website that total funding distributed nationwide through the CARES Act was $315.3 billion of which $132.2 billion was allocated to healthcare providers.

“When HHS said we're paying for the hospitalizations and we are offering these various incentives, that was taken very seriously by every chief financial officer and every C-suite in U.S. hospitals,” Dr. Peter McCullough told the committee and audience. “When the government said, ‘You will not use ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were not used because that's what the government was telling them to do.”

McCullough was among the doctors, who addressed the committee, during its May 25-26 hearings in Phoenix. The two-day event, co-chaired by state Rep. Steve Montenegro (R-Litchfield Park) and state Sen. Janae Shamp (R-Surprise), was organized to investigate Arizona's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In 2020, Arizona recorded 75,700 total deaths, 25.2% from heart disease, 16.7% from cancer, and 11.1% from COVID-19. In 2021, of 81,482 total deaths, 24% were from heart disease, 15.7% from cancer, and 15.6% from COVID-19, according to state Senate data. During this time, Arizona healthcare providers received $191 million.

“Dr. Scott Jensen out of Minnesota was telling me how in his state when the funding was coming through the CARES Act, that if the diagnosis of COVID was mentioned in the discharge summary 161 times, they received a $75,000 bonus,” alleged Shamp, who was a perioperative nurse before being elected to the state Senate for the 29th District in 2022. 

“Did that happen in Arizona?" she asked. "If it did what do we do to stop that from happening again? Because that seems like an incentivization.”

The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, approved May 30, rescinded CARES Act program funding. No further payments are being delivered to providers.

“Funding went to coroners, medical examiners…it went to everyone and I believe that the intent was pure but when we look at the protocols that were utilized, I hope that we are able to, here in Arizona, and working with our congressional members never walk down this path again with the CARES Act,” Shamp added.

In addition to funding, the CARES Act also brought with it military countermeasures and immunity, according to McCullough.

“Under the CARES Act, there is broad immunity from liability meaning if anybody is harmed with a countermeasure, there is no culpability,” he said.

McCullough considers the COVID-19 vaccine, guidelines, hospital protocols, extended stays in nursing homes, and free COVID tests for all to be forms of military countermeasures.

"We have over 60 guidelines in cardiology," he said. "I'm not restricted by those guidelines. I always do more than the minimum. Any good doctor would, but what happened in the hospital is hospital administrators relatively quickly started using the guidelines as a boundary. They said we couldn't do anything beyond the guidelines, and this was the first time the guidelines were used as a limitation."