With most opinion polls suggesting that Democratic contender Joe Biden has notched up significant leads in several key American states, it must be a sign of President Donald Trump’s desperation ~ in the midst of widespread condemnation of his administration’s handling of the Covid epidemic ~ that he has turned his ire on medical professionals.

Suggesting that doctors were somehow being incentivised to drive up the death count from coronavirus, Mr Trump alleged “Our doctors get more if someone dies from Covid”. Lest there be any ambiguity about his claim, he said: “You know that, right? I mean our doctors are very smart people.So what they do is they say ‘I’m sorry but everybody dies of Covid’”.

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He then added, “In Germany and other places, if you have a heart attack, or if you have cancer, you’re terminally ill, you catch Covid, they say you die of cancer, you died of heart attack. With us, when in doubt choose Covid. It’s true, no, it’s true.Now they’ll say ‘oh that’s terrible what he said,’ but that’s true. It’s like $2,000 more so you get more money.”

Not surprisingly, the American Medical Association has hit back strongly. “The suggestion that doctors ~ in the midst of a public health crisis ~ are overcounting Covid-19 patients or lying to line their pockets is a malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided charge,” the AMA’s president, Dr Susan Bailey said in a written statement.

The controversy erupts even as the United States continues to report high numbers of infections and death ~ with more than 90,000 positive diagnoses and more than 900 deaths on Friday. Medical professionals ~ an estimated 16 million of them across the country ~ will be incensed at Mr Trump’s allegation for as the AMA statement noted “physicians, nurses, and frontline health care workers have risked their health, their safety and their lives to treat their patients and defeat a deadly virus.”

Certainly, the facts about medical earnings would suggest that doctors in the US have little reason to fudge the numbers of Covid deaths, or to profit from higher numbers. While the epidemic has added to workloads of primary care professionals, it has adversely impacted those who earn from procedures that can be deferred.

According to the authoritative Medscape Physician Compensation Report, a primary care physician in the country earned an average of $237,000 (Rs 1.77 crore) a year in 2018, while a specialist earned $341,000 (Rs 2.54 crore) a year. Orthopedic specialists, plastic surgeons, otolaryngologists, cardiologists, dermatologists, radiologists, gastroenterologists and urologists each earned an average of $400,000 (Rs 2.98 crore) or more.