Affluent Californians offer doctors tens of thousands of dollars for a coronavirus vaccine – and it’s still not enough to get them on the list.
Other tactics of the rich and famous West Coast include their personal assistants harassing doctors daily and offering five-digit donations to hospitals, The Los Angeles Times reported Friday.
“We get hundreds of calls every day,” said Dr. Ehsan Ali, who runs Beverly Hills Concierge Doctor and his clients include Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande.
“This is the first time that I have not been able to get anything for my patients.”
Dr. Jeff Toll, who runs a private concierge practice in Los Angeles – which charges up to $ 25,000 a year for top-notch care – said “people are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars.”
Toll, who also has privileges at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, recalled a patient asking him, “If I donate $ 25,000 to Cedars, would that help me get in line?”
Another doctor with many Hollywood clients told the Times that celebrities and executives “literally call me every day”.
‘They don’t want to wait. They want to know how to get it faster, ”said the doctor.
The Golden State has strict rules for who should be given the opportunity first: health workers and nursing home residents, then essential workers and people with chronic health conditions before everyone else.
But janitor doctors are already preparing to get their powerful patients vaccinated as soon as possible, the Times reported.
They compile long patient records with medical histories and potential COVID-19 risks and buy expensive ultra-low temperature freezers needed to keep the vax at minus 94 degrees, the report said.
“As soon as we heard the vaccine hit the market, we started looking for freezers,” said Andrew Olanow, co-founder of Sollis Health, a concierge practice with clinics in New York, the Hamptons and Beverly Hills.
The well-connected could take advantage of the vague guidelines and argue that an underlying condition or a top position at an essential company should push them to the top of the list, warned Glenn Ellis, a bioethicist and visiting scientist at the Tuskegee University.
“With enough money and influence, you can make a convincing argument about anything,” Ellis told the Times.
But Gov. Gavin Newsom – who made his own blunder by dining maskless and indoors at the Tony French Laundry restaurant – has warned that California will be “very aggressive” in making the rich and powerful “not ousting those who deserve the most. the vaccinations. “
“Those who think they can lead the way and those who think because they have resources or relationships that allow them to do it … we’ll be watching that very, very closely, too,” Newsom said.