Priced out: Some Long COVID and ME specialists charge high prices for concierge care, The Sick Times

[Grigor]

Quite shocking read to be honest. Crazy prices. No wonder these docs are hyping as much as they do. They need patients willing to pay the price.

 

[Hutan]

I wonder if this situation is resulting in potential US donors, the very rich, getting captured by these doctors and their thinking? The wealthy want the best, and perhaps think the people charging the most are the best. And as a result, the private funds that could be getting donated to good research are squandered on these clinicians with their good PR skills and their ideas.

 

[jnmaciuch]

I wonder if this situation is resulting in potential US donors, the very rich, getting captured by these doctors and their thinking? The wealthy want the best, and perhaps think the people charging the most are the best. And as a result, the private funds that could be getting donated to good research is squandered on these clinicians with their good PR skills and their ideas.

For the first few years of their illness, perhaps. I think the charade doesn’t tend to hold up for more than a handful of years at most, once you’ve been through 3 or 4 doctors and their expensive protocols. Even the most desperate rich people with money to burn probably wisen up after a while. Rich people want the best, but they are also used to the “best” giving them immediate results.

I knew of a very rich young person with ME who went to my college, we had a mutual friend and both got sick around the same time. She went through all the US doctors promising miracle protocols, then her parents flew her around the world to see specialist after specialist, and finally after a year or two she and her family realized there was nothing to be done. Eventually donated a lot to Open Medicine Foundation I believe.

[edit: these private physicians charge an arm and a leg but even that tends to be a barely noticeable drop in the bucket for the US 1%]