‘An Arm and a Leg’: The rapid-test edition: Who’s making a buck?

Download PDF Copy

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Dec 22 2021

Rapid, at-home covid-19 tests are close to essential if you want to see friends and family this holiday season, and do your best to stay safe.

But they're freaking expensive and can be hard to find. What the heck happened?

In this episode, we talk to reporters who investigated the shortage of tests and traced the U.S. rapid-testing problem all the way back to the Food and Drug Administration and other government agencies.

Plus, Dr. Céline Gounder talks about why these tests are so important in the first place and how best to deploy them this holiday season — if you can find any.

Here's a transcript of the episode.

"An Arm and a Leg" is a co-production of KHN and Public Road Productions.

To keep in touch with "An Arm and a Leg," subscribe to the newsletter. You can also follow the show on Facebook and Twitter. And if you've got stories to tell about the health care system, the producers would love to hear from you.

To hear all KHN podcasts, click here.

And subscribe to "An Arm and a Leg" on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.