Another unforced error from the Biden administration. This time on COVID tests | Editorial
Tampa Bay Times Editorial Board, Tampa Bay Times
Wed, February 16, 2022, 5:35 AM·3 min read
What is the Biden administration thinking? The president’s team touted a recent program to ensure that every American household would get four at-home COVID tests. People could use the tests to quickly find out whether they were infected and take appropriate measures to contain the spread. Makes sense. But by keeping secrets about the costs, those good feelings have soured. Instead of an easy win, the administration faces yet another unforced error.
At-home COVID tests were difficult to find during the late summer and fall as the delta variant took hold, causing record numbers of infections. Then in December and January, the highly infectious omicron variant spread quickly and made finding an at-home test even harder. During that time, Biden said the government would contract with manufacturers to make hundreds of millions of tests. After a limited bidding process, the Defense Department announced in mid-January that three companies had agreed to produce 380 million tests for nearly $2 billion. The tests began showing up in the mail late last month, and they are all supposed to be delivered by March 14. Hooray! Tests for everyone!
Except that the law says U.S. contracts valued at $10,000 or more must be posted for public view on sam.gov or the Federal Procurement Data System. Guess which contracts aren’t there? “We don’t know why that data isn’t showing up in the FPDS database, as it should be visible and searchable. Army Contracting Command is looking into the issue and working to remedy it as quickly as possible,” spokeswoman Jessica R. Maxwell told Kaiser Health News in an email in January. This month, Maxwell declined to provide more information about the contracts and referred all questions about the pricing to the Department of Health and Human Services, Kaiser reported in a recent article.
Defense and Army spokespeople eventually told Kaiser that the contracts would have to be reviewed, citing the Freedom of Information Act that protects privacy. Neither said why the price per test could be a privacy or proprietary concern, Kaiser reported. If the administration is proud of the program, why so cagey with the details?
The public needs the legally required information to assess whether the government overpaid for the tests or whether the tests could have been provided faster. They should be able to see for themselves whether they or the companies who supplied the tests got the better deal. What were the terms of the contract? Did one company get better terms than the others? Did the U.S. government overpay compared to what other countries’ governments paid for similar tests?
People like free stuff, especially if it helps fight a pandemic. They know that few things are really free, but tests showing up in the mail are a tangible reminder that the government is trying to fight the latest variant. The idea generally garnered positive marks. Now, that goodwill is tainted with unnecessary suspicion —unnecessary because this mistake was so easily avoidable.
Biden’s team should immediately release the terms of the contracts — and get them posted to the public databases. Appearing to hide the details of government spending is never a good look. In this case it raises the simple question: What is the administration trying to hide?
Home 
