RICH people are trying and failing to use their wealth to skip lines to get the coronavirus vaccine before essential workers and nursing home residents in California.
Elite clients are itching to cut the line to get COVID-19 by offering large cash sums to doctors who are forced to decline under the state’s vaccine distribution restrictions, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Dr. Ehsan Ali, who runs Beverly Hills Concierge Doctor, charges clients like Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber between $2,000 and $10,000 a year for personalized healthcare.
“We get hundreds of calls every single day. “This is the first time where I have not been able to get something for my patients,” Ali told the outlet.
One patient even tried to bribe one doctor with a $25,000 donation to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, one of the first hospitals to stock the vaccine.
“If I donate $25,000 to Cedars, would that help me get in line?” the patient asked Dr. Jeff Toll, who has admitting privileges at the hospital.
Toll told KABC-TV that concierge doctors who serve high power clients will find it difficult to tell them that they have to wait.
”I think one of the difficult things is for physicians who take care of these high-power people to be able to say, no you have to wait. These people don’t usually have to wait,” Toll said.
Dr. David Nazarian, of My Concierge MD in Beverly Hills, told KABC-TV that he will obey the rules despite frantic calls from his A-list clients.
“They wanted it yesterday. We will play by the rules but are doing everything we can to secure and distribute the vaccine when its available to us.,” Nazarian said.
California received its first 327,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine this week and will distribute them first to health-care workers and nursing home residents.
The vaccine will then be given to essential workers and people with chronic health conditions before, eventually, it will be available to the public.
Health officials “will be very aggressive” in enforcing the predetermined order, Gov. Gavin Newsom said earlier this week.
“To those that think they can get ahead of the line, and those that think because they have resources, or they have relationships that will allow them to do it. We will be monitoring that very, very, closely,” Newsom said.
Experts have long warned that vaccine scarcity could lead to black markets for the jab – even possibly leading to counterfeit vaccines.
“If history is a guide, illicit markets for the Covid-19 vaccine are likely to develop to feed people who wish to jump the line or simply profit from trading in a valuable commodity,” warned Roderick Jones in an opinion piece for NBC.
He continued: “These illicit markets will, in turn, build the necessary motivation for criminal networks to steal and counterfeit the new vaccine. And the arrival of these illicit markets online — offering real or faked Covid vaccines — is as certain as receiving a spam call.”
Medical ethicists told the health publication STAT that wealthy and well-connected patients could get early access to the vaccine in a variety of ways – including manipulating the definitions of “essential workers” and “high risk” conditions.
Bioethicist Arthur Caplan of New York University told the outlet that “there absolutely will be a black market.”
“Anything that’s seen as lifesaving, life-preserving, and that’s in short supply creates black markets,” he said.
California has had a record-breaking week in coronavirus cases, with death tolls reaching 293 on Tuesday, 379 on Wednesday, 300 on Thursday, and 272 on Friday, according to the California Department of Public Health.
America’s coronavirus cases have soared past 17 million after recording the deadliest day of the pandemic so far on Thursday.
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