Pa. is part of a settlement that includes millions of dollars in consumer relief
HARRISBURG — Attorney General Dave Sunday announced that Pennsylvania is part of a $4.87 million multistate settlement with GS Labs that resolves claims regarding the company overcharging patients and failing to deliver timely COVID-19 test results.
Pennsylvanians impacted by this settlement should expect to receive information from GS Labs as to how to obtain any restitution due to them.
“Pennsylvanians deserve medical testing with integrity, fair pricing, and timely results. Unfortunately, GS Labs exploited the huge demand for testing to make large profits while not fulfilling their obligations to patients,” Attorney General Sunday said. “This settlement will return money to Pennsylvanians who were relying on this company to provide critical and timely medical information.”
The multistate coalition investigated numerous problems with GS Lab’s nationwide testing practices from 2020 through 2022, including but not limited to the following:
- GS Labs intentionally advertised inflated “cash prices” for COVID-19 tests, sometimes as high as $380 per test, or nearly $1,000 for multi-panel tests. These “cash prices” were used to justify overcharging patients with insurance coverage. While GS Labs offered a “discount” from these “cash prices” to those actually paying in cash, almost 30,000 patients still paid much more than the market rate for their COVID-19 tests.
- For hundreds of thousands of patients, GS Labs guaranteed test results within 3 days and failed to deliver on that promise, sometimes taking a week or longer to send test results to patients.
- Despite advertising that patients with insurance would have no out-of-pocket costs, the company charged administrative fees as high as $49 per test to about 70,000 patients.
Under the terms of today’s settlement, GS Labs will pay $3.6 million in restitution to patients, including $1.8 million for cash-paying patients that were overcharged for tests, $1.7 million for patients that were charged administrative fees, and $33,692 for cash-paying patients that did not receive test results within 3 days. The settlement creates an online restitution mechanism that will be funded and administered by GS Labs, with oversight by the multistate coalition.
The company will also pay $1.25 million to the multistate group.GS Labs has stated that it no longer offers testing services and is not operational. As part of the settlement, if GS Labs decides to resume testing services, the company must make several changes to its advertising and sales practices.
This settlement was negotiated by the Attorneys General of Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Washington. Joining them in the settlement, alongside Attorney General Sunday, are the Attorneys General of Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, and South Dakota.
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