Amid a national shortage of Covid-19 tests, California’s wealthy can still get tested – CNN

In the Los Angeles area, at least two so-called "concierge doctors" tested hundreds of people, or provided them tests to take home, for between $250 and $600 per test.

The Medical Board of California is "aware of some doctors doing this" and is looking into the allegations, spokeswoman Veronica Harms told CNN.

"If we are made aware of any of our licensees engaging in such activities, whether it be a doctor, nurse, physician assistant, etc., we will investigate the situation and take appropriate action," Harms said in a statement.

The US Food and Drug Administration did not provide immediate answers to CNN's questions about the legality of selling tests or letting patients take tests home for later use.

Dr. Arthur Caplan, founder of the New York University School of Medicine's division of medical ethics, said no laws or regulations were necessarily violated, but the practice lays bare the vast inequality in the American health care system.

Describing it as "one of the grossest scandals of America that class drives access to resources in an epidemic," he said state and federal resources haven't properly been put into action.

"It's a system failure. It would also be nice if somebody in Washington (DC) had said, 'Here's how we're going to fairly distribute tests, ventilators, protective gear,' instead of left it up to the market," he said.

Doctor did nothing wrong, he says

Long before the novel coronavirus pandemic, Caplan said, there were people who were poor, didn't have insurance or had enormous co-pays for their insurance, "but now, people with insurance, people who are middle-class, they find themselves wondering, 'I wonder if the rich are gonna push me aside?' And the answer is: Yes, they can."

Where government is supposed to be accountable to the people, "the free market, the invisible hand, doesn't care who it kills, has no ethics," he said.

Dr. Jay Gordon, a Santa Monica pediatrician, insists he did nothing wrong by giving his patients tests to take home. In fact, he said, he believes he increased demand -- and thus production -- by selling tests to well-heeled patients.

"It's not that I took tests away from people because the tests weren't available to them," the doctor told CNN.

He doesn't know how many tests he sold -- at least 300 but maybe as many as 500 -- for $250 a pop, he said. The first 100 sold in 10 minutes, Gordon said. He's donating the profits to charity, he said.

"Use them if you have symptoms or if you have a problematic exposure," Gordon said he told his patients.

He further advised them to hold on to them and not to use them right away, he said.

$50 test, $600 bill

Dr. David Nazarian is a primary care physician who has a "concierge" practice in Beverly Hills offering "boutique" or "executive" health care to his patients.

"We try to provide the best care that we can. It's more of a one-on-one experience where we're there for patients when they need us," Nazarian said.

In February, when the coronavirus outbreak began making headlines, Nazarian contacted test manufacturers LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics to order Covid-19 test kits for his patients as part of his practice's role in anticipating "certain factors that may impact health care," he said.

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Amid a national shortage of Covid-19 tests, California's wealthy can still get tested - CNN