Order 4 *MORE* FREE COVID tests

[BumRushDaShow]

43. "You are aware that many of the individuals who work in nursing homes.... aren't vaccinated"

And you just made my EXACT point about WHO needs access to tests and needs to be tested so they DON'T infect the people they are caring for and/or are working around.

Many of them are in the age group directly under the 65+ (I know some who are neighbors of mine - e.g, the 55 - 64) who make up many of the "home health care" ( "private duty" ) workers who are not working in a facility but are taking care of older and/or disabled individuals who are home-bound.

For example, I have a sister who is 58, who has had R.A. for over 25 years, and who had a hip replacement back last October (her 2nd joint replacement after a previous knee replacement). She ended up acquiring a staph infection in the hospital (the hospital sent her a certified letter apologizing for that).

This lead to a 4 month saga of a litany of health workers who came to her home several times a week to change the wound dressing and adjust the portable "wound-vac" unit that she had to have implanted, while helping her to administer what eventually became 2 different 6-week courses of antibiotics (where the first round got rid of one type gram negative bacteria but not another, requiring another course of a different antibiotic).

The home nurses who came to take care of wound were very personable, experienced at what they had to do, and were in their early 60s (I met 2 of them and we were chatting about all kinds of subjects during those encounters).

My sister is in a household of 3 (her youngest daughter who just turned 16 is still home) and she has a husband who is on dialysis 3 x a week and is on the kidney transplant list. He is 63.

So fuck them? You propose leaving that group - workers and vulnerable patients out from "free tests"? That's just silly.

People on Medicare are still waiting. We got a fraction of a free test per month, unless we live alone.

That statement is ridiculous. With this initial rollout, EVERYONE with more than one resident in a household got a "fraction of a free test" - no matter what their health condition, age, work, or insurance status. And people in rentals are "still waiting" too and could not order at all because the early rollout of the system was not accepting multiple requests for a single address (that would have had "apartment numbers" associated).

You also have many who might still be unemployed (or unemployable) due to the pandemic who may have even contracted it, survived, but have long COVID and can't work, and who are not insured because they can't afford COBRA, nor have they had chance to navigate through the ACA.

And you do realize that there are millions of Medicare recipients who either have supplemental insurance (e.g., retired feds can maintain their FEHB plan when they apply for and start receiving Medicare and it's not considered "Medicare Advantage" ) or who opted for some "Advantage" plan.

Rather than sending more tests to those who got nearly immediate access to twice that quantity - per person, rather than per household, almost immediately, each and every month

This is bullshit. I went out and BOUGHT my own tests when I could find them and got nothing "immediately" until after the initiative of "free tests" from insurers was announced and was handed some by my pharmacist. It took a month for me to get the "government tests" because I am in a complex with multiple homes with a single street address. And in order for me to be reimbursed for what I had already purchased earlier, FEP Blue requires that I literally print out a claim form from their website, fill it out, and then snail mail it to their office here in PA to submit it as a claim (with a copy of the receipt of the tests).

When I picked up a script just after the initiative went into effect, only then did my pharmacist actually hand me some tests "courtesy of my insurance company". Meanwhile I was still waiting for the so-called free "instant" tests.

But you do realize that not all insurers are doing that and an insurer is not going to mail me "free tests" every month. No one is "sending tests" unsolicited to people every month. You have to REQUEST them and those who might be on a mail order prescription plan could conceivably get those test kits in the same fashion after requesting them. I can REQUEST some from a pharmacist and show my card and the pharmacist can hand them to me, where they track what is distributed. BCBS is not mailing anything to me.

- use the free tests (which make virtually no difference when spread over the entire population) where they can make a real difference - to those on Medicare who are stll barred from getting free tests going on 3 months.

Again, the entire point of these "free government tests" was because of a lack of SUPPLY for EVERYONE (except those in the big corporations or corporate industries like the sports teams, etc). There were even some medical facilities who couldn't get a hold of enough testing supplies. And the schools - where you had millions of children who were unvaccinated (mainly because a younger set of elementary age only recently got approved under the EUA for the vaccine) where weekly (or some type of periodic testing) couldn't happen again, due to lack of tests.

Your blanket assertion that all Medicare recipients were "barred from free tests" is nonsense.

I'm sorry but the arguments you have made are purely selfish and would do little to mitigate the problem.