Congresswoman Katie Porter (D-CA) challenged CDC Director Robert Redfield. While evasive in the beginning her relentlessness forced him to promise free COVID-19 tests.
Katie Porter strikes again
The Hill reported the encounter as follows.
A confrontation between Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert R. Redfield went viral this week, as the California Democrat pressed him to guarantee free coronavirus tests for all Americans.
At Thursday’s House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing, Porter said a coronavirus test for an uninsured patient would cost $1,331.
“Dr. Redfield, do you want to know who has the coronavirus and who doesn’t? Not just rich people, but everybody who might have the virus?” she asked him.
Porter then hit Redfield with a series of questions about how the general public would be able to afford the tests and if the administration would move to allow free testing, to which Redfield replied, “I think you’re an excellent questioner, so my answer is yes.”
“Excellent, everyone in America, hear that you are eligible to go get tested and have that covered regardless of insurance,” she said after Redfield’s confirmation. “Please, if you believe you have the illness, call first … do not let a lack of insurance worsen this crisis.”
Katie Porter is what a politician who is a real advocate looks like. We could only wish most politicians instead of being beholden to corporate interests looked out for most of us.
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And being without funding to support it, other response programs and research programs will get the axe. Likely, first the responders, since they do so little until something happens.
Had I been there answering questions, she’d be quite depressed. When repeatedly and incessantly pressed to release tests that I don’t have to give and no funding for, my response would be “No, neither I or the rest of the CDC has the funding to provide such massive services”.
The tests and shipping aren’t free, the manpower and lab reagents aren’t free. Want to give them out, even in that position, I’d be fully for it – once it’s funded, otherwise other essential services will get cut. Again.
Or have you forgotten that the response teams that helped resolve the Ebola epidemic are no longer employed?
Now, the SOB’s have an excuse to cut more essential, lifesaving services to cover that tax cut for the wealthy and at our own expense of risk of untreated pandemic.
Great job! Such successes are Pyrrhic, we may not survive many more like them.