Federal funding of Covid tests for uninsured Americans running dry; nation's largest lab to charge $125/test

"As the White House pleads with Republicans in Congress for emergency aid to fight the coronavirus, the federal government said that a fund established to reimburse doctors for care for uninsured Covid patients was no longer accepting claims for testing and treatment 'due to lack of sufficient funds'," Ellen Barry reports for The New York Times. Some U.S. health-care providers are informing uninsured people they can no longer be tested for the virus free of charge, and will have to pay." People with private insurance, Medicare or Medicaid are not affected.

Quest Diagnostics, one of the nation's largest networks of testing sites and labs, began telling uninsured clients last week that they must pay $125 per test, Barry reports. "On Wednesday, the federal Heath Resources and Services Administration stopped accepting claims for testing and treatment for uninsured patients. On April 6, the agency will stop reimbursing providers for vaccinating uninsured people." Those include pharmacies. Coronavirus infections often lack Covid-19 symptoms, so without free testing, uninsured people could unknowingly infect others in vulnerable populations. Around 31.2 million Americans were uninsured in 2020.

"Early this year, during the Omicron wave, the program allowed leading laboratories to perform 500,000 tests a month free of charge to uninsured individuals, according to the American Clinical Laboratory Association," Barry reports. "In 2021, the program spent $130 million to reimburse providers for testing, treating and vaccinating uninsured people. The White House recently requested $22.5 billion in emergency Covid aid, but Republicans in Congress have said they will not approve another aid package unless the White House finds another way to source the funds. . . . An initial deal to use about $7 billion in state-government coronavirus aid to help pay for a smaller, $15.6 billion package collapsed earlier this month when rank-and-file House Democrats and governors objected to clawing back that money."