A dentist friend (yes, even dentists need friends!) looked into becoming a COVID-19 vaccination center. She’s amply qualified to inject people (“so is a janitor,” says a med school professor friend). She earns her high income by serving a low-income high-risk population so it would make perfect sense for the parents of her patients to come in and get stuck.
What’s stopping her? “It costs $12,000 for the fridge and I don’t think I’d be able to get reimbursed for giving shots. I’m set up to bill for dental services and being able to bill for medical is a whole different procedure.”
(How is it possible to prosper when the patients are poor? Medicaid doesn’t pay quite as much as private dental insurance for any given procedure, but it is common for children on Medicaid to need $10,000+ in dental surgery due to candy+lack of brushing. An upper middle class child might yield a slightly higher payment for a cleaning, but that is the only revenue that can be obtained from treating the upper middle class child.)
Marketing to MassHealth (Medicaid) customers in Worcester, Maskachusetts, a city whose entire economy consists of mining poor people (medical, dental, criminal prosecution and divorce/custody/child support litigation in a magnificent brand new courthouse).
True observations. Lots of dentists simply cannot afford to think about the expense of administering them and the complexity/difficulty of billing for them – even in more “wealthy” areas of MA. There are some with lots of upscale patients with private insurance or who can pay out-of-pocket who could probably swing it. Some do not want to be involved with it at all.
I have to ask my “mole” about this.
And yes, also – if you closed the Poor Mines of Worcester you’d be left with a ghost town of little restaurants, used car dealerships/body shops/mechanics, and small businesses struggling to survive. It has been Zombified.
One business that I can guess has been fairly pandemic-proof thus far (but for who knows how much longer?)
https://www.thegunparlor.com/pages/preowned-all
Check out that price on the pre-ban AR-10 (like an AR-15 but the much more powerful 7.62×51 not 5.56): $7,999.99!!
Phil
WHERE is the post on the Great GameStop Stonk of 2021??
How is it possible “to mine” poor people for “criminal prosecution and divorce/custody/child support litigation”? Lawyer are to be likely court – appointed public defenders. Do they make a good living out of American national debt?
How can poor people be mined by the Criminal Industrial process? Public defenders get paid a wage that is far higher than the median private sector wage in Worcester. Sheriffs, prison guards, etc. get paid yet more (maybe not as much as their counterparts in California: “California Prison Academy: Better Than a Harvard Degree” https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704132204576285471510530398 ).
Similarly, with child support. The U.S. has at least a $6 billion/year industry of government-paid child support enforcement employees. When the defendants don’t pay they get brought into court by highly paid police officers, sentenced to prison by highly paid judges, and then are guarded in prison by highly paid prison guards. (Where “highly paid” is relative to private sector jobs in central Maskachusetts.) (Note that oftentimes the defendants are almost guaranteed not to pay due to the fact that they’re unemployed at the time that the child support order is issued and the theory is that the order to pay plus the threat of prison will motivate them to find work. Employers don’t always find these defendants attractive as employees.)
“Worcester, Maskachusetts, a city whose entire economy consists of mining poor people (medical, dental, criminal prosecution ”
Back in the mid-80s, I spent a day “job shadowing” a prosecutor at the Worcester DA’s office; and dropped out of New England School of Law shortly thereafter.
“says a med school professor friend”
Perhaps I’ve had an unusual experience but my dentist has turned out to be brighter and more conscientious than the rogues’ gallery of MDs I have met.
(Since this is in Sweden, all of the above are women.)
Pretty sure the dentist would follow up the vaccine by saying “1 other thing. You should really get a night guard.”