During a conversation with reporters on December 6, White House press secretary Jen Psaki fielded a question from NPR’s Mara Liasson about why the US government wasn’t making free COVID tests available to all. Liasson’s question was perfectly reasonable. After all, several countries have opted to make free testing available — and the idea of simply sending tests through the mail made a lot more sense than the much more convoluted and insurance-based scheme the White House was then touting. Psaki’s response, which combined exasperated mockery with a clichéd talking point about how much free testing would cost, was resoundingly and rightly criticized.

Sometime during the roughly two weeks since Psaki gave her press conference, the laws of political reality appear to have shifted — and what was worthy of mockery by the White House press secretary less than a month ago seems to have been quite possible all along. Though details are still emerging, Biden administration officials this week made clear that they plan to send out half a billion free, rapid at-home tests in January. We’ll have to wait and see how the White House intends to make such a plan work, and whether or not its promised quantity of tests is actually adequate to meet needs.

What we do know is that it was always possible to make free testing available on a large scale and that, with the Christmas season in full swing, the White House’s foot-dragging represents a significant failure (even if it has essentially conceded the concept of free testing). Given the administration’s track record to date and Joe Biden’s own established preference for means-testing, it’s still possible the rollout next month will come with strings attached or needless eligibility criteria. Regardless, the case for making rapid COVID-19 tests free to anyone and everyone who wants them remains as ironclad, from a public health perspective, as it did a few weeks ago.