Why rapid COVID tests are so freaking expensive

An Arm and a Leg

Society & Culture, Medicine, Health, Health & Fitness, Documentary

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2021

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Who’s making a buck: rapid test edition. Rapid, at-home COVID tests are pretty much essential if you want to see friends and family this holiday season, and stay safe.

But they’re freaking expensive and can be hard to find. What the heck happened?

When ProPublica reporter Eric Umansky went looking for COVID tests recently, he came back empty handed. He and fellow reporter Lydia DePillis investigated, tracing the US’s rapid testing problem all the way back to the FDA and other government agencies.

Plus, Dr. Celine Gounder talks about why these tests are so important in the first place and how best to deploy them this holiday season — if you can find some.

Here’s a transcript of the episode.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there as I was starting to write the script for this episode
0:03.2	I got an email from Walmart. It said your package has been delivered
0:07.2	And I went right downstairs to grab that thing. I did not want to risk some stupid porch pirate getting it. I
0:13.8	Open the door
0:15.8	Oh boy got it inside. Let's see is this what I hope it is
0:20.1	Took up my keys
0:21.8	Rip the box open it. Yep
0:25.8	Yeah, that was a short live burst of joy
0:30.3	This is like
0:32.3	It's the shittiest thing that this is the most excited. I've been about receiving a package for a really really long time
0:39.8	Because you know it was inside that box ten little two packs of covid tests
0:44.0	Walmart sells them at cost $14 a two pack, which is like nine or ten bucks less than anywhere else
0:50.1	When you can get them which completely sucks because these are my family's key not to living a normal life but to
0:58.0	Doing some normal things like having dinner with my mom who's 91
1:02.8	Occasionally seeing a friend without a mask without worrying we could be passing long covid
1:08.6	Especially with this super transmissible Omicron variant that is no freaking joke and even at seven bucks a pop these tests are
1:16.2	stupidly expensive. I mean it's the holidays. I want to see a few people
1:20.6	Today on the show why we want these tests and why they're so expensive and hard to find in
1:26.4	In the United States because guess what it's not this way in other countries and it didn't have to be this way here
1:32.6	But you know on the upside some people are definitely making a nice dollar this way
1:39.0	This is an arm and a leg show about why health care costs so freaking much and what we can maybe do about it
1:44.5	Dan Weissman I'm a reporter and I like a challenge
	...

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