If the Department of Health and Human Services follows its promise to give stakeholders a 60-day notice, the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency will not end Jan. 11 as planned because the government has given no such notice. That would mean the COVID-19 emergency, which began in January 2020, will last until at least April.
This emergency affects millions of Americans because it enables the federal government to pay for waivers and policies for Medicaid coverage, telehealth coverage, COVID-19 testing, vaccines and antiviral treatments. When the emergency expires, COVID-19 treatment and testing costs will fall back on patients and insurance companies.
Healthcare Finance News reports:
An estimated 15 million people could lose Medicaid coverage when the COVID-19 public health emergency ends and with it the continuous-enrollment requirement.
Hospitals are seeing an influx of children suffering from the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and are bracing for a bad flu season, as well as continued COVID-19 cases. Extensions are needed until at least April to have time to lobby state legislatures to enrich their Medicaid pay rates, according to McKnights Long-Term Care News. The hope is that many of the states that have had Medicaid add-ons would convert those into the base Medicaid rates.
Two dozen governors are asking President Joe Biden to end the emergency declaration (see letter and list of governors). The letter says, in part:
The PHE is negatively affecting states, primarily by artificially growing our population covered under Medicaid (both traditional and expanded populations), regardless of whether individuals continue to be eligible under the program. While the enhanced federal match provides some assistance to blunt the increasing costs due to higher enrollment numbers in our Medicaid programs, states are required to increase our non-federal match to adequately cover all enrollees and cannot disenroll members from the program unless they do so voluntarily.
Making the situation worse, we know that a considerable number of individuals have returned to employer sponsored coverage or are receiving coverage through the individual market, and yet states still must still account and pay for their Medicaid enrollment in our non-federal share. This is costing states hundreds of millions of dollars.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, states have added 20 million individuals to the Medicaid rolls (an increase of 30%) and those numbers continue to climb as the PHE continues to be extended every 90 days.
Paxlovid will no longer be free when the public health emergency ends
When the federal public health emergency officially ends, the government will no longer pay for COVID-19 vaccines or antiviral medications, and you may be paying…
Read the rest of the story here > Will the federal public health emergency for COVID-19 end Jan. 11? – Poynter