Summer home comes with a nose job

May 28, 2008 Well, look no further. You can rent a mansion in the Hamptons, the summer home of New York's rich, that comes with unlimited plastic surgery.

The cost: just a cool half-million dollars.

Dr. Stephen Greenberg, a New York plastic surgeon who already offers prewedding and postpregnancy packages, unveiled his Hamptons summer getaway package last week.

Besides the house and the surgeries -- maybe a nose job, face-lift, breast implants or perhaps all three -- Greenberg is throwing in a nurse, chauffeur, chef and VIP access to various clubs and parties.

"I have a lot of access to a lot of different events, and the patient would as well," Greenberg said.

The package even includes some new clothing to help you flaunt that new body.

Patients have a half-dozen homes to choose from. Greenberg is working with various real estate brokers to fill the mansions for the summer.

"The market in the Hamptons isn't as strong as it was in recent years," he said. "There are several homes still empty."

Greenberg said that there are limits to his unlimited cosmetic surgery plan.

"It has to be medically reasonable," he said. "The patients have to be in good condition to have the procedure. I am not going to do something that is outside the box. The patients have to be both physically and psychologically good candidates for each and every procedure done in the safest possible fashion.

But for Dr. Darrick Antell, an attending plastic surgeon at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York and a spokesman for the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, that isn't enough.

"You may cloud your medical judgment if there is money of this size involved," Antell said, suggesting that such a plastic surgery package could violate the ethical standards of the society.

"What would you do if somebody purchased this package and then gave you a menu of plastic surgery options? You would then feel obligated to do the surgery," Antell said. "It brings down the doctor-patient relationship. It brings down medical necessity."

Antell said that doctors cannot, for instance, raffle off a face-lift for a charity event. He said this package is clearly "a publicity-generating concept."

"I think that this is pushing the boundaries," Antell said. "While I'm not on the ethics committee, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they would look very closely at this.

"There are issues on many different levels," Antell said. "You don't want it to cloud the doctor's judgment when things get complicated like this."

Greenberg said that he does a lot of surgery packages in which patients are taken to a high-end hotel to recover.

"This is kind of an extension of that," he said. "My normal luxury recovery package, we put patients in a hotel and typically send them home with nurses. Patients are saying, `I want more.'"

Greenberg's "postpregnancy tuneup," for instance, includes a tummy tuck, liposuction and breast implants or a breast lift.

"There is no question that children are wonderful, but also no question that they can take a lot out of you, in more ways than one," Greenberg advertises on his Web site.

So has anybody shelled out the $500,000 for the Hamptons package?

"Not yet," Greenberg said Tuesday, "but very close."