A COVID-19 drive-through testing site. Photo: File.
The ACT Government was quick to disavow the zealous health official who told an ACT resident in need of a COVID PCR test to visit her mother in a nursing home that she might have to cough up $112 for the privilege of joining the queue at EPIC or be out of pocket at a GP (if she could find one).
But the incident this week raises the issue of whether a person should, in effect, be penalised for having to follow a government rule.
Apparently, only close contacts and those with symptoms should turn up the government testing clinics, and the rest should go to those easily accessible GPs and pull out the card.
And that’s been the policy all along, according to Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith. Funny I don’t remember being asked when I rolled up to the Kambah testing clinic when the ACT was gripped with COVID panic.
Now the clinics can pick and choose, although the word in the queue this week was just say you have mild symptoms and don’t mention the visit to the nursing home or interstate trip.
The ACT COVID-19 website said that if you don’t fit the testing criteria, you may be charged a fee – that covers it.
Well, maybe not, especially without an EFTPOS machine on hand.
If the government is setting the rule, and it can’t escape responsibility by saying it’s up to individual aged care facilities how they manage things, then it should bear the cost.
It has created the issue, COVID remains a public health issue and these become matters outside our control that are supposed to be in the public interest.
I know we already have a whole range of requirements, from passport photos to physical examinations, that come with fees attached and about which we have little choice.
Some can be understood as actually covering the cost of a service, but the fee for others such as birth certificates, essentially your information, remains bewildering, especially in the digital era.
But COVID has brought with it a new set of demands that limit our ability to travel and in other jurisdictions even access services, again supposedly in the public interest.
It has resulted in a whole bureaucratic structure set up to manage the impacts and mitigate the risks.
If we are still to play our part in containing that risk, whether that be getting vaccinated or getting tested, we are not at the stage yet where the cost can be handed to the individual.
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