Posted on 12/05/21
| News Source: The Hill
President Biden announced a plan with much fanfare on Thursday for free at-home COVID-19 tests as part of his effort to tame the pandemic this winter.
But the catch is that people will still have to pay the cost up front for the tests, which can be over $20 for a pack of two at the local CVS, and then submit receipts to their health insurer to get reimbursed.
That process has raised concerns among experts that the upfront cost and added hassle of reimbursement will still cause barriers to testing, a contrast to European countries where tests are free or just a couple of dollars up front.
Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said Biden’s announcement would “certainly make at home testing more accessible,” but added that “it’s still going to be cumbersome for people.”
Advocates have been pushing for greater access to rapid at-home tests for over a year, saying that frequent and cheap rapid tests can help limit spread of the virus without resorting to business closures by giving people the ability to know when they are infectious and need to isolate, and when they are not.