There appears to be a huge amount of bickering about who should pay for the Coronavirus test kits.
The answer to this question resolves if one asks the question about the nature of tests and who benefits from the test.
For example, I as a healthy individual, wouldn't benefit much from a test.
Think about it! If I paid for a test today; the test wouldn't prevent me from getting the virus tomorrow. Who knows? I might contract the virus while going to the testing center. The knowledge that I would gleen from the test at this point is relatively minor.
In contrast the information that the health care system is receiving from tests at the moment is extremely valuable. The tests help track and slow down the spread of the disease.
At this point in the outbreak, the health care system is the primary beneficiary of the tests. Consequently, the health care system should be the primary buyer of the test kits.
As the disease spreads and it becomes part of seasonal flu cycles, then needs will change.
If I were sick and went the the hospital; I wouldn't want my health care provider to simply test for coronavirus. I would want the doctor to do a full diagnosis to figure out what was wrong with me.
If we had a system that said that the CORVID19 tests are free and other tests full price; the doctor might waste resources on the CORVID19 test when I am actually showing symptoms of food poisoning and another test would be more applicable.
The question of who should pay for the coronavirus test seems to be answered by first examining who is benefitting from the tests. The primary beneficiary of the test in the first months of the outbreak is the health care system itself.
This dynamics will change at a later point in course of the disease. At this later point the coronavirus test will be just one of many tests that people might take as they diagnosis illnesses.
As there is no upper bounds on the different tests that people can take. At this later point it is better for patients to pay for the tests so that individual people can determine the best use of their resources.
Anyway. I really dislike the people who are pointing at the spread of the virus and demanding socialized medicine.
Yes, there are a few times when society at large is the primary beneficiary of a given action. But for the most part that is not the case.
The best political solution is to have a system based on free market principles but that is dynamic enough to handle the few cases that arise where the system is the primary beneficiary of a given action.
In a free market the entity that is the primary beneficiary of the test should be the entity that pays for the test. (This type of behavior tends to happen naturally in a free market.)
In a socialized system, health care forms to social crises. Since the care was formed around social crisis, it fails to adapt to individual needs when the system normalizes.
Things change. Free markets tend to out perform socialized markets because they can better adapt to change.
