By Juan Montoya
When physician assistant Eder Hernandez was hired by city officials way back in late March, he was hired to provide professional services, which meant that city officials and the administration had the option of either making a request for proposals (RFPs or letting out bids) or simply hiring him.
After he collared Mayor Trey Mendez and some commissioners, passed himself off as indispensable and an expert, they put in a good word for him, and Hernandez became the only game in town, the man put in charge of the city's COVID-19 testing at the Sports Park Complex.
That was in March 25, and until two other firms were hired in the first week of July to handle the demand for tests, Hernandez owned the COVID-19 testing monopoly in town.
During that time, his meter was running and the invoices of the tests – whether the results were positive or negative – were processed by the city's finance department and duly paid out to Hernandez's Valley Medical Urgent Care LLC.
The first invoice was for a modest $2,027.10. But 89 invoices later, on July 24, that total has risen to an astronomical $814, 851.60.(Click on graphic to enlarge.)
The other two late comers – The Port Occupational and Medical Clinic LLC and Reliable Urgent Care and Occupational Medicine – lag far behind in chips. The first has handed in $163,464 in testing bills, and the latter $63,286, but both are quickly gaining ground on Hernandez's outfit.
All told, the city has paid $1,041,601 for the COVID-19 testing to the three firms as of July 30, and Hernandez's has gotten 78.2 percent of those payments.
We knew there was money in COVID-19, but Hernandez, apparently, knew before anyone and hurried to curry the favor of the people that mattered, the handlers of the public purse, the elected officials. Mayor Trey Mendez often came in to cyber space to cheerlead and commissioner Jessica Tetreau was always there for some motherly words of advice.We have been keeping notes of Super Eder and to tell you the truth, the picture that emerges is of a highly ambitious paraprofessional who is not quite a medical doctor, actually a Physician's Assistant, but who bristles at the affront that he is not really a bona fide doctor.
Whatever.
The fact remains is that at the rate he is going, COVID-19 and his political benefactors are going to be very, very good to him and make him a millionaire in a matter of months.
He is very adept at tooting his own horn, judging by his frequent Facebook postings. As he raked in the cash with his testing monopoly, people would complain that as implemented the questionnaire that decided who got tested for free (paid by the city) or not, was preventing some people from taking the test.
Then, if all the right buttons had been pushed and his staff placed the applicant on a list that stretched for days after the questionnaire had been answered, the suspected infected person led his normal life interacting with family and other people in the community.After the test was administered at the Brownsville Sports park, patients would complain that it could take as much as a week or more to learn the results.
When they did, Hernandez would respond that he and his staff were overwhelmed with work and were doing every humanly possible to keep up, but, if they they persisted in calling him for a test or for results, would grow exasperated to the point where he threatened to cal the police on them.
And after the threat, a sermon of righteousness. (See graphic at right)
Meanwhile, as the patients waited for results, they lived in suspense.
Well, they need not worry now with three outfits handling the testing and giving poor Hernandez a much-needed break from his herculean test.
(Well, actually he deigned to be a guest on Erasmo Castro's Brownsville Talk podcast and liked it so much, he started one of his own featuring...himself, of course.)
We admit we sometimes worry about the man's mental state, as when he commented on the flooding of a Reynosa Clinic. To him it was not just that water was getting into the ward, but that it got him wishing for the Second Coming, and I mean now God!
After all, He did promise.
Oh, and did we tell you of his COVID-19 "cocktail" remedy vs. the Ivermectin-based regime that got the cyberworld abuzz and prompted Facebook to shut down an account which repeated the claims it cures COVID-19?
Well, we'll leave it for another time. Maybe by then Hernandez will have made the $1 million from our COVID-19 misery. They say the first million is always the hardest one.