Covid Commercial Clinics Booming
These Towns Trusted a Doctor to Set Up Covid Testing. Sample Patient Fee: $1,944.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/upshot/covid-testing-doctor-fees.html
Doctors not affiliated with reputable hospitals which offer honest billing are proliferating, setting up private clinics, running offices with like-minded physicians, offering care in shopping centers to exploit high-traffic, parking and seeming goodwill.
They are making a small fortune with this approach, and in some cases where clinics are conjoined for wide-area target, large fortunes are generated.
Commercial profit-oriented hospital chains are inducing these clinics to join them for advertising, referrals, billing, fighting insurance dismissals, lobbying governments and businesses to get in on the opportunity to profiteer from health fears blazened on TV, the internet, lectures, Wall Street, unions, professional orgs, universities, churches.
The chains and clinics offer to share profits with the more-trusted institutions who direct their members to the services, in some cases even providing space for the operations as if a part of the organization.
The rise of commercial clinics, such as CityMD and branches of major hospitals, has spread this exploitative medical care, sometimes competitors are packed into especially lucrative spots and share promotional infrastructure and employees. Investors adore this growth, profits are sky-high, with dramatic increases from scourges like Covid, climate change and natural disasters.
Underwriting this is government funding for Medicare, the aging population, the browbeating by insurance industry, the greedy pharmas bribing MDs.