“Walking Dead” actor Daniel Newman owes $9k for coronavirus test that was never processed

Out Walking Dead actor Daniel Newman has been hit with a $9,000 bill for a coronavirus test, but he never got the results. In fact, the test was never even processed.

Newman’s insurance company refuses to cover the cost and while recently passed legislation requires insurers to waive cost-sharing for coronavirus testing, Newman sought medical help before the law was passed.

Related: Walking Dead actor comes out on social media

“I started to get a fever, just started to feel kind of chills, and I was just like, ‘Oh crap, you know, whatever they had, I think I got it,'” Newman told CBS News.

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After calling around, he found an emergency room that had the ability to test him and doctors told him go in and get tested. But after he was swabbed, they told him they couldn’t actually process the sample.

He said the doctors told him, “We are not allowed to process the test because there’s a really limited bandwidth of capacity on how many tests can be processed per day, and so we’re not allowed to send off the tests for anybody that has mild symptoms.”

After he asked if he was going to be billed for a test that couldn’t be finished, he said they told him he’d be on the hook anyway.

“And they were like, ‘No, you just came into an emergency room, it’s gonna be thousands of dollars,” he said.

“That, not even on a personal level, on a humanitarian level, that infuriates me. The fact that no one can afford this. How can… a family of two or four kids afford even one person at $9,000, much less four people?”

Some insurance companies like Cigna, Humana, CareFirst, and Aetna are waiving co-pays for testing but also treatment. Not all companies have gone that far.

CBS reports that they reached out to Newman’s insurance company but did not get a response. The outlet did not name the insurer.

Newman provided LGBTQ Nation with a copy of his bill showing a total of $9,116.

“We have to start mass testing everyone for free, tracing and notifying everyone exposed, quarantining them, and giving our healthcare workers the equipment they need immediately,” Newman told LGBTQ Nation. “It’s the only thing that is working in China and South Korea and the United States is not doing it and it is going to kill potentially millions of us.”

Newman, who plays Kingdom member Daniel in The Walking Dead, came out on Twitter in 2017. He followed it up with a video explaining why he decided to come out. The actor credited a young woman at a homeless youth shelter for spurring him to come out of the closet.