Who's been trying to cash in on COVID vaccinations? (And how did racism help them out?)

An Arm and a Leg

Society & Culture, Medicine, Health, Health & Fitness, Documentary

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2021

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With COVID vaccinations ramping up, it's time to check in: Who's been trying to make a buck? And who's been doing their best to serve the folks who need help the most? In Philadelphia, the good, the bad, and the ugly have all been on vivid display.

The Bad comes with a giant serving of chutzpah: For a while, the city put its mass-vaccination program in the hands of a 22 year-old with no experience in health care, but with a healthy interest in making money. It did NOT go well. (You may have seen that headline before. We get the deep dive from public-radio reporter Nina Feldman, who uncovered the caper.)

The Ugly is systemic racism: Or is it just a coincidence that the city put its trust in a white 22 year-old... while ignoring an effective group of licensed, experienced, Black health-care professionals who were volunteering their time? That would be the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium, led by Dr. Ala Stanford.

The Good is the work that Dr. Stanford and the Consortium have been doing, which throws the Bad and the Ugly into stark relief. Since last spring, they've been working tirelessly and creatively to address disparities in the care that Black Philadelphians receive for COVID-19.

They're not the only folks working to address those disparities—including a lack of good vaccine information from trusted sources. Here's a great example from a project called The Conversation: Between Us and About Us, hosted by comedian W. Kamau Bell:

You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp6S4C6zG_M

We talked with one of the project's leaders, Dr. Rhea Boyd, author of a recent New York Times essay, Black People Need Better Vaccine Access, Not Better Vaccine Attitudes. (Disclosure: The project is backed by the Kaiser Family Foundation, who also are behind our co-producers at Kaiser Health News.)

Here's a transcript for this episode.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there. In Chicago, an essential worker named Jamie Gentry did something a lot of folks have
0:05.0	been doing recently. She opened a gazillion browser tabs and scoured them all to find a coated
0:10.0	vaccine appointment. It was just this whole series of refreshing, refreshing, refreshing all day
0:15.3	into the evening. She finally found one at an urgent care clinic. She jumped on it, then realized
0:20.8	she'd accidentally booked two spots with them. So she called the clinic to fix it. And that's when
0:25.6	they told her, oh, hey, uh, by the way, we'll be doing a, uh, 15 minute consult before your shot
0:32.7	and, oops, oh, we don't take your insurance. So that console's going to be, uh, 300 bucks. Or
0:39.0	they said, you could take advantage of our special. It would be $200 instead of the $300,
0:44.5	but then I would have to pay it up front in order to get the shot. Yep. Enter Mariah Wilful,
0:50.3	a reporter for WBEZ, the local public radio station. Mariah got Jamie's story and she called
0:58.0	a state health official to say, hey, is this even allowed? And the official was like, uh, no,
1:04.1	not really. Providers get the Vax for free. They're supposed to work out any administration fees
1:08.9	with an insurance company or from the government. She told Mariah, we've got a hotline to report this
1:13.8	kind of thing, okay? Could you let people know? She told Mariah she had already gotten 40 to 50 calls.
1:19.6	And this is before Mariah and WBEZ put the whole thing on blast. After Mariah's story came up
1:24.9	like that same day, the clinic's medical director emailed Mariah to say they were going to give
1:30.4	refunds to the 20 or so other people. They've already charged. She wrote, this is 100% our bad.
1:40.0	Great. One down. How many more to go?
1:43.0	This is an arm and a leg, a show about the cost of health care. My name is Dan Weisman. I'm a reporter
1:50.9	and I like a challenge. So my job on this show is to take one of the most enreging, terrifying,
1:56.7	depressing parts of American life. And I know we're still in kind of a take your pick situation
2:00.8	here, but the cost of health care, it definitely looks like a container and bring you a show that
	...

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