So About Those “Free” At-Home COVID-19 Tests the Government Is Giving Us …

The White House announced Monday that the Biden administration would be making over-the-counter at-home COIVD-19 rapid tests available in the U.S. for free.

Well, sort of.

OK, not really.

What the administration has actually done is require private health insurance companies to cover the cost of the tests (up to eight a month, per person), either through outright coverage or reimbursement.

For many people, this is certainly better than the nothing we were currently getting, as most OTC tests tend to be in the $20 each range—and that’s if you can actually find one—and for families or for people having to take them regularly, that can quickly add up to a fully prohibitive cost. ($20 is also 2.75 hours of work at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour so we can’t pretend like the cost of even one test isn’t prohibitive for millions of people in this country.)

However, this plan doesn’t help any of the tens of millions of people in the U.S. who don’t have insurance—plus those insured by Medicare, which does not appear to cover these tests.

And even for those who do have private insurance, and who luck out and find a test in a store (or online), it seems, at best, to be very stressful and at worst totally impractical and restrictive, to not know whether that test will be free or if you’ll have to front the cash for it (and then go through the burdensome process of filing an insurance claim) until you’re standing at the register.

The Biden administration isn’t totally ignoring the uninsured and underpaid. In addition to the free-but-not-really-free OTC tests, they’re also sending 50 million at-home tests to community health centers and Medicare clinics. The administration is also purchasing 500 million at-home tests that can be requested online from a website they say they’ll be setting up this month, to be mailed out for free to anyone who wants one.

All of which is very nice but still falls far short of what we actually need:

And throw in some free upgraded masks while you’re at it.

(image: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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