Biden White House staffers really need to talk to each other. We can’t have an executive branch where no one knows what the other person is thinking.
President Joe Biden will announce Tuesday that his administration has purchased 500 million at-home rapid COVID-19 tests to distribute free to anyone who requests one through a White House website.
The tests, which will be delivered via mail, will be made available in January. The White House request website is also expected to launch in January.
It’s not a bad plan. In fact, it was a good plan back on Dec. 6, when the official White House spokeswoman suggested it was ridiculous.
The moment occurred during a back-and-forth between National Public Radio’s Mara Liasson and White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
“Last week,” said Liasson, “the president explained some ramp up in testing, but there’s still a lot of countries like Germany and the U.K. and South Korea that basically have massive testing free of charge or for a nominal fee. Why can’t that be done in the United States?”
Said Psaki, “Our objective is to continue to increase accessibility and decrease costs.”
“It’s not complicated, though,” said Liasson. “Why not just make them free and give them out and have them available everywhere?”
Psaki scoffed.
“Should we just send one to every American?” the press secretary asked.
Responded Liasson, “Maybe.”
“Then what happens if every American has one test? How much does that cost, and then what happens after that?” asked a still-scoffing Psaki.
Yes, the official spokeswoman for the administration that has proposed a multitrillion-dollar climate and social spending plan suggested this month it would simply be too expensive to make free COVID-19 tests available to the public. Also, note that Psaki sidestepped completely the fact several countries have already made free COVID-19 tests available to their citizens. Seems a rather relevant detail to ignore.
Again, does anyone in the Biden White House talk? A few phone calls probably would’ve spared Psaki the unpleasant distinction of being the mouthpiece who ridiculed a plan the president ended up announcing a few weeks later.
Look, far be it from me to mock federal officials for changing course, especially when they change course in the right direction. However, as others have noted, Psaki laughed off a proposal that several countries, including the United Kingdom, long ago adopted to great effect.
It was stupid at the time for Psaki to shoot down the idea. It’s good the White House ultimately believes free testing is a good idea, but why did it apparently believe it was a non-starter back when we already knew free testing can be done?