Rapid Home Covid Tests Going For $80 In US Amid Omicron Surge: Price Gouging, Pandemic Profiteering

[appalachiablue]

- The Guardian, Jan. 7, 2022. - Some reports have even shown vendors charging as much as $250 as people are being urged to report such price gouging. -

With at-home Covid tests running scarce during the Omicron surge, the price gouging has begun, and everyone from restaurants to pet food stores appear to be trying to cash in. Recent reporting by Vice found a Manhattan deli advertised an Abbott BinaxNOW rapid test (retail: $24) on the Seamless delivery app for $80. Meanwhile, an online-only pet store, Pet Foods by Village Farm, offered to deliver the same type of test for $50, and a liquor store was selling a “Covid fighter pack”, including rapid tests and hand sanitizer, for more than $100.

(Return to remote schooling brings despair in US as Omicron surges. Read more).

There have been reports across the country of vendors charging double or triple the normal costs of at-home Covid tests. One New York restaurant worker paid $180 for four test kits, the Los Angeles Times reported. And a Covid testing site in San Francisco’s Mission district is reportedly charging between $99 and $250 for rapid tests. Authorities have warned that this is a growing problem.

In a December statement, the New York attorney general, Letitia James, encouraged people to report price hikes. “Fraudsters are on notice that if they attempt to price gouge during this new surge, we will not hesitate to take action,” she said, adding that her office had already seen reports of test kits “being unlawfully sold for more than $40 and up to $70 per package”.

A pack of two at-home rapid Covid tests should cost around $25. This week, Walmart and Kroger are raising prices for BinaxNOW rapid tests to the market price after a temporary government-mandated $14.

The Biden administration has tried to alleviate the situation by announcing plans to purchase and distribute 500m free rapid tests, and said on Friday that at-home tests will be reimbursed by insurers starting next week. But, with pharmacy shelves picked clean and lines at testing sites stretching for hours, people may be more willing to pay a premium to get tested. The situation is reminiscent of the early days of the pandemic, when the onset of Covid unleashed a wave of price gouging for personal protective equipment, such as $70 hand sanitizer and N95 masks...

More, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/07/covid-rapid-test-price-gouging-omicron
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- 'Pandemic Profiteering, Plain and Simple': Walmart & Kroger Hike Prices for Covid Tests. "Companies will not simply decide to take less of a profit during a health crisis unless we make them." Common Dreams, Jan. 5, 2022.

Walmart and Kroger are raising prices for one of the more widely used at-home coronavirus tests, leading critics to accuse the U.S. retailers of exploiting an Omicron-fueled surge in demand for the kits to pad their bottom lines...
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/01/05/pandemic-profiteering-plain-and-simple-walmart-and-kroger-hike-prices-covid-tests

[DURHAM D]

1. Local Walgreens raised the price from $23 TO $30. NT

[RockRaven]

2. It should be pointed out, perhaps, that tests are only useful if the outcome is going to change

one's behavior or next step...

If you feel kind of lousy but not "I need help/I need to go to the hospital" bad then wouldn't you try to not go to work (if you can) and not expose family members (if you can), etc. anyway? Whether it's COVID or influenza or a cold, you would still not want to spread it, right?

A lot of people seem to want to know for the sake of knowing. That's masturbatory, by itself.

[Irish_Dem]

3. I think some people are understandably anxious and need answers and information.

To guide them on treatment and quarantine.

[Demobrat]

4. If I have any kind of symptom

I will not try to get a test. I will assume I have it.

[BeckyDem]

5. K&R