![]() ![]() Her son, who survived leukemia, recently had a follow-up biopsy appointment canceled because he was no longer insured. ![]() This provision actually ended a bit ahead of the public health emergency - states could start disenrolling people as of April 1.Īlthough the head of the health agency in charge of Medicaid, Chiquita Brooks-Lasure, has said many times that federal officials are "laser focused" on helping ensure that people who are eligible don't lose coverage, a recent estimate from health research group KFF suggested that as many as 24 million people could lose Medicaid, including millions who are still eligible but fall through administrative cracks.Īdams thinks that's what happened with her kids' Medicaid coverage. Medicaid grew to be bigger than it's ever been, with an estimated 95 million beneficiaries, which is more than 1 in 4 Americans. Shots - Health News Starting Saturday, millions of Americans could get kicked off Medicaid That authority comes from a different declaration, which hasn't ended yet - the timing of that is up to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. Vaccines, tests and treatments emergency use can continueĪnother thing that won't change for now is access to numerous COVID-19 vaccines and tests and treatments that were allowed for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration. The Drug Enforcement Administration has not said how long it will allow telehealth prescribing of controlled substances, but most of the other measures have been extended to at least the end of next year. Some popular changes to health care brought by the COVID-19 pandemic will remain in place, at least for a time, including more flexibility with telemedicine, access to controlled substances and hospital-at-home programs. The changes to how CDC collects and shares COVID-19 data "comes as no surprise at all but is further evidence that these investments were always temporary and not part of a long term strategy to be better public health data stewards," Beth Blauer, who helped run a highly respected COVID data tracker at Johns Hopkins, told NPR. Shots - Health News CDC to stop reporting new COVID infections as public health emergency winds down The health insurance system will take over - patients will have to go to the doctor, get a prescription, perhaps pay a copay when it comes to COVID tests and treatments, just like they do for all other illnesses. The federal government will no longer buy up tests or vaccine doses or treatments to give out to the American public for free. Vaccines and tests no longer free - now covered by health insurance Here's what's changing and what's staying the same, for now. What is left of many of those programs are now being dismantled. Those rules allowed for things like drive-through mass vaccination campaigns, where no one asked for your insurance card, and free curbside COVID-19 testing kiosks. That included major investments in vaccine development, new laws that allowed people to stay on public insurance programs without interruption, and free tests and vaccines for all. In the early months of the pandemic, for a brief time, there was remarkable bipartisan unity in quickly marshaling federal resources to fight the new virus. "But we have never had an infectious event like this – ever." Concrete changes coming "History says that all pandemics end," he says. ![]() Professor Howard Markel, a physician and historian of infectious diseases, is in the camp that's still concerned. "I think we're living in a place where we're treating COVID similar to flu." Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. "COVID 19 is still a significant problem, but emergencies can't go on forever," observes Dr. Others remain concerned about the virus and worry that the end of the declaration could mean relaxing measures that allow the virus to create new disruptions. Some, including Republicans in Congress who pushed the Biden administration to end the declaration, say it's about time. deaths later, that declaration is due to expire this Thursday. More than three years of social disruption, at least 6 million hospitalizations, and 1.1 million U.S. EST Sunday, February the 2nd, the United States government will implement temporary measures to increase our abilities to detect and contain the coronavirus proactively and aggressively," announced then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. 31, 2020, with six confirmed cases of a new coronavirus in the U.S., a group of federal health officials gathered somberly at the lectern at the White House and declared a public health emergency. public health emergency declaration helped marshal resources during the worst of the COVID-19 crisis, when the virus was spreading rampantly. ![]()
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