Caveat: For the intellectually challenged, nothing that follows raises or addresses the merit or efficacy of a solution (such as, oh, Medicare for All), which is an entirely separate problem and issue. Remember, the alternative to bad isn’t necessarily good. It can always get worse.

Do you have the ‘Rona? If your symptoms are “right” and sufficiently severe, maybe the government will deem you worthy of being tested, and the president has said that  Seoul has 38 million residents the Chinese flu will magically disappear tests will be free. Isn’t that wonderful?

Within minutes, he got a call from the heads of a hospital emergency room and infectious-disease department where he lives in upstate New York: He should come right away to the E.R. for newly available coronavirus testing. Though they offered to send an ambulance, he felt fine and drove the hour.

In an isolation room, the doctors put him on an IV drip, did a chest X-ray and took the swabs.

Now back at work remotely, he faces a mounting array of bills. His patient responsibility, according to his insurer, is now close to $2,000, and he fears there may be more bills to come.

Andrew Cencini was smart to turn down the hour-long ambulance ride, which could well have cost him thousands of dollars. Heck, a two-block ambulance ride can cost $1200, plus the price of an array of services that the ambulance might have delivered along the way but didn’t, but will still charge for it because they can.

But, but, but, you ask, isn’t it free? Free is a curious word in the world of modern medicine.

While insurers had indeed agreed to cover the full cost of diagnostic coronavirus tests, that may well prove illusory: Mr. Cencini’s test was free but his visit to the E.R. to get it was not.

On the news, medical staff tell of how they have no time to eat, to sleep, to go to the bathroom. And yet, hospitals still manage to find the time to bill. Cencini’s test was conducted in the E.R. Cha-ching. He was given an IV drip. Cha-ching. Chest x-ray. Cha-ching, ching, ching. And maybe some random guy in re-used personal protective gear opened a curtain and looked at him, which counts as an out-of-network examination because observation matters.

It’s not as if anybody asks a patient what they care to have done to or for them, or informs them in advance that there will be a charge for this service that won’t be covered, either by the law or by their insurer. When patients are told they’re getting an x-ray, no one tells them about the cost, and all the associated costs such as the rental of the wheel chair used for the three minute trip to the machine (maybe it was a portable x-ray or performed in the ER, but bear with me on the unknown variables) and the overtime fee for the nice fella pushing the wheel chair, not to mention his gloves at $127 a pair. Who tells the doc, “Thanks but no thanks”?

In this time of emergent crisis, of ERs and ICUs overwhelmed, of medical tents being set up in Central Park and a white boat with a red cross in the harbor, one would think that perhaps making sure every iota of service is accounted for on a bill to be collected by agencies who take their cut off the top wouldn’t be fully operational. One might be wrong.

Those testing laboratories want to be paid — and now. Last week the American Clinical Laboratory Association, an industry group, complained that they were being overlooked in the coronavirus package.

“Collectively, these labs have completed over 234,000 tests to date, and nearly quadrupled our daily test capacity over the past week,” Julie Khani, president of A.C.L.A., said in a statement. “They are still waiting for reimbursement for tests performed. In many cases, labs are receiving specimens with incomplete or no insurance information, and are burdened with absorbing the cost.”

Testing labs aren’t owned or operated by the government, and as private businesses, they’re entitled to be paid for their services. They have costs and expenses, and their owners are entitled to make a profit from their investment. After all, without their investment, we would have all those tests and no one to test them. That would be a problem as well.

But the complaint that they’re not being paid is somewhat disingenuous. It’s not necessarily that they aren’t being compensated for their costs, but that they aren’t making their costs plus their profit. The variable cost of a test may be $10 (I’m just making up a number for the sake of argument), but the charge for the test may be $100. Or $2700. They may eat the cost of some tests due to lack of adequate insurance information, but that’s part of the justification for overbilling other nice folks; someone has to pay and it’s not going to be the lab.

The government could pay for all coronavirus tests and, by law, preclude labs from charging patients’ insurance or directly. It could fix a price that was sufficient to compensate for the costs of the test plus a fair profit for the labs. Or your fav public official could announce on the telly that your government is doing all the wonderful things you hoped it would do, take a bow and give himself a 10 out of 10 for his ginchiness, and you won’t know whom to call about the bill you receive from the collection agency in a month or two. Provided you survive.