White House Mocks Idea of Mailing Every American Free Covid-19 Tests

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki mocked the thought of mailing out free covid-19 assessments to each American family on Monday, in simply the most recent signal that President Joe Biden’s lack of creativeness is making the pandemic worse.

The Biden administration introduced a plan last week to reimburse folks for the prices of speedy covid-19 assessments by insurance coverage, however there are an estimated 28 million Americans with out medical health insurance of any variety. And on Monday the White House press pool needed to know why an advanced rebate scheme was being applied when the U.S. might simply comply with the lead of different international locations and make the assessments free.

“There are still a lot of countries like Germany and the UK and South Korea that basically have massive testing free of charge or for a nominal fee. Why can’t that be done in the United States?” a reporter requested throughout the White House each day press convention, out there on YouTube.

“I would say first we have eight tests that have been approved by the FDA here. We see that as the gold standard. Whether or not all those tests would meet that standard is a question for the scientists and medical experts, but I don’t suspect they would,” Psaki stated, suggesting that different international locations had scientifically inferior assessments.

“Our objective is to increase accessibility and decrease costs,” Psaki continued. “If you look at what we’ve done over the course of time, we’ve quadrupled the size of our testing plan, we’ve cut the cost significantly over the past few months—and this effort to ensure insurers are able to get your tests funded means 150 million Americans will get free tests.”

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“Why not just make them free and give them out and have them available everywhere?” the reporter asked.

“Should we just send one to every American?” Psaki said, dripping with disdain for a good idea.

“Maybe,” the reporter replied.

“Then what happens if every American has one test? How much does that cost and then what happens after that?” Psaki said, thinking she’d someone gotten the upper hand.

The answer to Psaki’s questions should be “it costs whatever it costs because we’re in a once-in-a-century pandemic” and “what happens after that is you send people more tests because we’re in a once-in-a-century pandemic.”

“All I know is that other countries seem to be making them available in greater quantities for less money,” the reporter pointed out.

“We share the same objective, which is to make them more accessible, right? Every country’s going to do that differently,” Psaki said.

Then Psaki tried to pretend like other countries are somehow using inferior tests, a scare tactic that large pharmaceutical companies try to bring up when asked why prescription drugs are more expensive in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world.

“Again, our tests go through the FDA approval process. That’s not the same process… it doesn’t work that way in every single country,” Psaki said. “But what we’re working to do here is build on what we’ve done to date and continue to build out our testing capacity.”

Rapid covid-19 assessments can be found without spending a dime at just about each pharmacy in the UK, however can price about $12 every within the U.S. But American exceptionalism was on full show on the White House on Monday in Psaki’s efforts to persuade the common individual that someway Americans are getting a greater high quality product than British folks as a result of they’re spending a bunch of cash. The UK medical regulator, it needs to be famous, is simply as stringent because the FDA when approving assessments.

The U.S. reported 197,449 new cases of covid-19 on Monday and 1,351 new deaths from the disease, numbers that are likely artificially high from a backlog in reporting that happens every weekend. But even the seven-day average is disturbingly high relative to other wealthy countries, with the U.S. averaging over 118,000 new daily cases and 1,289 new deaths every day during the past week.

The U.S. vaccination rate remains stubbornly low, at just 60%, with political concerns still keeping many people from getting vaccinated against covid-19. But there’s not necessarily much President Biden can do to convince a third of the population to get the shot, given the country’s polarization.

About 9% of Democrats say they don’t plan to get vaccinated towards covid-19, whereas 38% of Republicans say they don’t need to be vaccinated, based on current figures from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Covid-19 isn’t going away anytime quickly. But the very last thing Americans want proper now could be to be informed their covid-19 assessments are costly as a result of they’re higher than assessments in different international locations. It’s bullshit and easily reveals an absence of creativeness by the Biden administration for the potential for bringing down well being care prices in the U.S.