COVID-19 Testing is Supposed to Be Free. Here’s Why You Might Still Get Billed

This report was originally published on March 20, 2020.

TIME: Jena Starkes is pretty realistic about the challenges she faces when confronting COVID-19: it could get rough. The 45-year-old lives with her 81-year-old mother in Brooklyn, and in recent days, as the outbreak has worsened, she felt there was not much they could do.

“If I get it and I give it to her, it is unlikely that she would survive,” Starkes says. But, she adds, because she doesn’t have insurance for herself — and can’t afford out-of-pocket hospitalization — her own health is hardly secure either.

“If I get it bad, I would probably just die,” she says. “What if I had to be ventilated? What if I had to pay $300 for a test? I literally could not.”