BOSTON – Did you hear my colleague Kristina Rex’s report Monday about a local man’s shocked sticker about a $190 bill for a COVID-19 vaccine?
It turns out it’s the result of a clumsy insurance bureaucracy. You may still be able to get vaccinated for free depending on your insurance.
But while that March study by the Kaiser Family Foundation projected a peak value of about $130 for unsubsidized vaccines, co-author Cynthia Cox now says the value likely would have been too low. “Pharmacies would possibly charge what’s called an administration fee. “It can also be as little as $20, $30 or $50 depending on the maximum cost of the vaccine,” he says.
And if you go to a pharmacy outside your insurer’s network: “Not only can you be exposed to the cost of the vaccine, but you will also have to pay some kind of cost, necessarily for the visit, for the charge of the provider who provides you with the vaccine. You’re the one. “
Gone are the days of loose testing, and while home tests are still cheap, more accurate PCR tests are not. At select CVS self-service locations, this will charge you $69. 99.
And even if remedies like Paxlovid purchased wholesale through are free: “When those previously purchased doses, the timing of which is still unclear, are exhausted, there will be a cost,” Cox says.
It turns out that the end of the emergency has meant a return to more expensive physical care for consumers. “COVID-related care in the U. S. it’s a bit more like the physical care provided in other giant rich countries: It’s flexible and doesn’t “matter what pharmacy you go to,” Cox said. “Now what’s being conveyed is that we’re essentially going back to how physical care works in the United States. “
Congress has rejected recent requests from the White House to subsidize vaccines, tests and treatments. And in addition to giving it a lot of importance, the management seemed willing to put COVID behind us, despite warnings about outbreaks and prolonged COVID.
Politically understandable. But when we asked Cynthia Cox whether the emerging prices of preventive measures could simply spread a highly contagious virus, her answer was: yes.