Megan Udinski, FISM News
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The COVID-19 free at-home test program has been canceled due to a lack of congressional funds.
As of September 2, one will no longer be able to order COVID tests through the “free” at-home test program, because Congress decided not to continue funding the program in order to replenish the nation’s stockpile of tests.
The Biden Administration originally implemented the plan when the Omicron variant hit, expecting over 500 million coronavirus home test kits to be delivered across the country.
Off the record, a senior official noted that, in anticipation of virus cases surging this fall, the administration hopes to prevent the country from running out of “our limited remaining supply.”
The senior official told the Washington Post, “We have warned that Congressional inaction would force unacceptable tradeoffs and harm our overall COVID-19 preparedness and response. Unfortunately, because of the limited funding we have to work with, we have had to make impossible choices about which tools and programs to invest in — and which ones we must downsize, pause, or end altogether.”
As with much of the pandemic, there is much blame-shifting in regard to the cessation of the home testing program, specifically the White House blaming Congress.
Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, claims that the free test program is the “most popular program” right now and encourages those seeking free tests to look into alternatives to the government-funded program.
Also, Columbia University’s professor of epidemiology and medicine Wafaa El-Sadr commented, “It’s unfortunate. We don’t know what’s going to happen moving forward. Availability of testing is a very critical part of how we need to manage COVID-19.”
Some private insurance plans, as well as Medicare Part B coverage, are required to continue covering up to eight at-home tests as long as there is a public health emergency declaration. The declaration is due to expire in October but the Biden administration is expecting to renew the emergency status for at least a few more months after that.
Dr. Ashish Jha, White House’s top COVID-19 official, stated at an event hosted by the Chamber of Commerce Foundation, “One of the things we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about in the last many months, and we’re going to continue this work, and you’ll hear more from the administration on this, is getting us out of that acute emergency phase where the U.S. government is buying the vaccines, buying the treatments, buying the diagnostic tests.”
While the Biden Administration blames congress for failing to fund the free home test program, it is clear from Dr. Jha that the White House also needs to find a way to return COVID-19 medical funding back to the private sector.
Similar to before the program was rolled out, you can buy a test at your local pharmacy and retailers, receive insurance reimbursement, or visit one of the 15,000-plus free testing sites.
You can get specific questions about insurance reimbursement answered here. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also has a search engine to find testing locations near you.
You can see watch more White House comments here: