Doctor punished for questioning COVID vaccines says she could have made up to $35M by giving shots

A doctor whose admitting privileges were suspended for questioning COVID-19 vaccines and prescribing ivermectin to COVID patients, and subsequently resigned from and unsuccessfully sued her hospital for defamation, claims she could have made tens of millions of dollars from administering the vaccines to her COVID patients.

Mary Talley Bowden cited her spreadsheet taken from Houston Methodist's public list of charges for various treatments, which start at $999 for Pfizer's 2023-24 vaccine for 5-11 year-olds (identified by its active ingredient, raxtozinameran) and top out nearly six times higher for the 2023-24 recombinant adjuvanted vaccine targeting Omicron XBB.1.5, possibly referring to Novavax.

"If I had vaccinated the 6,000 patients I treated for Covid, I could have made $35,523,000.

This hospital collects up to $5920.50 per shot," Bowden wrote on X, referring to the most expensive shot on her spreadsheet. "For comparison, the hospital charges $5.00 for aspirin" and $2.50 if paying cash, she added.

Other X users immediately pushed back, with one citing the platform's Grok AI chatbot, which said Bowden's "underlying premise is misleading and not true" because she cited the hospital's "chargemaster." Such prices are "notoriously inflated hospital list prices that almost no one actually pays" but rather "starting points for negotiations with insurers," Grok said.

Bowden rebuked the criticisms by noting Houston Methodist's stark difference in list prices between the COVID vaccines and aspirin. She noted the "massive premium" also applies to a 15-minute bedside tracheostomy at Houston Methodist, about $4,500 cash and twice as much for insured, even though it's one of the most common hospital procedures and "typically handled by residents with minimal/no supervision."

She contrasted Houston Methodist with Houston's Memorial Hermann, whose website shows it charged under $30 cash for COVID vaccines.

Bowden has become a wide-ranging medical freedom activist since her conflict with Houston Medical, most recently urging followers to pressure South Carolina lawmakers to support legislation banning mRNA shots "intended to prevent infection" and make ivermectin over the counter "with no interference from pharmacists" ahead of a Tuesday legislative hearing.

The Texas Medical Board also issued a public reprimand against Bowden last fall, claiming she tried to treat a patient at a hospital without admitting privileges but not fining or otherwise punishing her beyond the reprimand, the Houston Chronicle reported at the time.