Your county isn't doing free COVID testing?!?! In my county in Maryland every day there are about 10 sites you can get free testing (though they are not all open all day, but at any given time between 7a-6p you can get tested at least one or two places). There are also private practices where you can pay extra to get the results back 1-2 days earlier.

I had a secondary exposure and my rapid test was $400. Thankfully I have really good insurance and didn't pay anything.

My alma mater has an endowment of multiple tens of billions of dollars and was forcing students to pay for COVID tests after having on-campus lectures.

>Thankfully I have really good insurance and didn't pay anything.

For the lolz.

You are paying for it, you just don't get an itemized bill. It comes at the cost of extremely high 'insurance'. And if you think you're employer just absorbs that cost, realize that the extra cost would be in your pocket as wages if it weren't going towards healthcare.

Yes, if you want to get pedantic, I pay $300 a month (pretax) for very good insurance that covers both me and my wife. Given that we both got tested, that $300 seems a bit cheaper than $800.

> And if you think you're employer just absorbs that cost, realize that the extra cost would be in your pocket as wages if it weren't going towards healthcare.

lolz. This is quite the assumption. Wages have been holding steady despite massive corporate tax breaks. Why? Because corporations pocket the saved money without passing the savings onto employees. If I didn't get health insurance, it's quite unlikely that the savings would be passed onto me in the form of wages.

And even if I was given the wages:

1.) Wages are taxable. My healthcare is pre-tax.

2.) There's absolutely no way I could get the healthcare I currently enjoy for $300 a month on the open market. The risk pool for my company (Amazon) is so large that it effectively subsidizes my insurance.

There are plenty of free programs in Austin. Also if you have insurance, you have access to free testing de facto.

https://www.austintexas.gov/covid-testinfo

The market puts a price on things to prevent people from frivolously wasting resources and to improve availability to people who actually need them.

Edit to remove snarky tone.

What if someone who genuinely needs it can't afford the price set by the market?

The market would do that if you removed the regulatory monopoly guarantees.

Pharmacy is such a small part of healthcare... they are only going to make it worse anyways. They're still for-profit.