Most private insurers are no longer waiving cost-sharing for Covid-19 treatment

[Nevilledog]

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Sahil Kapur
@sahilkapur
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Most private insurers are no longer waiving cost-sharing for Covid-19 treatment, which means people seeking hospital care (who overwhelmingly are unvaccinated) will be required to pay.

Most private insurers are no longer waiving cost-sharing for COVID-19 treatment - Peterson-KFF...
Federal law requires all private insurance plans to cover the entire cost associated with approved COVID-19 testing so long as the test is deemed medically appropriate. Additionally, the U.S....
healthsystemtracker.org
6:35 AM · Aug 20, 2021

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/most-private-insurers-are-no-longer-waiving-cost-sharing-for-covid-19-treatment/

Federal law requires all private insurance plans to cover the entire cost associated with approved COVID-19 testing so long as the test is deemed medically appropriate. Additionally, the U.S. government pre-paid for COVID-19 vaccines and required COVID-19 vaccines be made available at no out-of-pocket costs regardless of whether the vaccine recipient is insured. However, while a handful of states required or created agreements with insurers to waive COVID-19 out-of-pocket treatment costs for their fully-insured plan enrollees, there is no federal mandate requiring insurers to do so.

Earlier in the pandemic, we found that the vast majority (88%) of people enrolled in fully-insured private health plans nonetheless would have had their out-of-pocket costs waived if they were hospitalized with COVID-19. At the time, health insurers were highly profitable due to lower-than-expected health care use, while hospitals and health care workers were overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients. Insurers may have also wanted to be sympathetic toward COVID-19 patients, and some may have also feared the possibility of a federal mandate to provide care free-of-charge to COVID-19 patients, so they voluntarily waived these costs for at least some period of time during the pandemic. Our subsequent analysis found that several of these insurers were starting to phase out COVID-19 cost-sharing waivers by November 2020.

In the last few months, the environment has shifted with safe and highly effective vaccines now widely available. In this brief, we once again review how many private insurers are continuing to waive patient cost sharing for COVID-19 treatment. We find that 72% of the two largest insurers in each state and DC (102 health plans) are no longer waiving these costs, and another 10% of plans are phasing out waivers by the end of October.

Across the two largest health plans in each state and D.C. (102 plans), 73 plans (72% of 102 plans) are no longer waiving out-of-pocket costs for COVID-19 treatment. Almost half these plans (50 plans) ended cost-sharing waivers by April 2021, which is around the time most states were opening vaccinations to all adults. Of the 29 plans still waiving cost-sharing for COVID-19 treatment, 10 waivers are set to expire by the end of October. This includes waivers that tie to the end of the federal Public Health Emergency, which is currently set to expire on October 17, 2021, though may be extended. Another 12 plans state that their cost-sharing waivers will expire by the end of 2021. Two plans specified end dates for COVID-19 treatment waivers in 2022 and 5 plans did not specify an expiration date.

*snip*

[Wingus Dingus]

1. If you are unvaccinated by choice and contract covid, this should be the consequence.

When you start talking real money, that might their attention. They should have started this in June or July.

[kirby]

2. Yes but....

This applies to everyone including vaccinated. Most likely those of us vaccinated will not require hospitalization but we might require something...

[Wingus Dingus]

9. If someone is vaccinated, they took measures to avoid being

infected--so that's stupid. Don't punish responsible behavior, insurers!

[MontanaMama]

3. Hell yes.

I hate insurance corporations but I support this.

[panader0]

4. I don't know much about the insurance industry, I'm on AHCCCS and much of my coverage

is free, due to my low income. But it's hard to think that insurers would continue to give coverage
to people unwilling to vaccinate. Would they give auto insurance to a blind driver?
I hope this move helps inspire more holdouts to get vaccinated.

[SWBTATTReg]

5. It started! Those that won't take the easy steps of avoiding getting COVID will now have to pay

for their unilateral bad decisions, impacting them, their families, etc. Some on DU speculated that this would start to happen. They are right...

Why should the rest of us subsidize these bad decisions when so easily a means to escape the worst of COVID 19 is easily available?

A good artist friend of mine who believes in the vaccine (and he's (Earl) 78) just lost a good friend (Winston) of his, for he believed that COVID 19 was a conspiracy, etc. He died several days ago due to COVID, blood pressure dropped too low, doctors couldn't save him. Although I do mourn Winston's passing, I'm more concerned w/ my 78 year old friend, and hoping that he holds up good, he argued long and hard w/ Winston to go get vaccinated and now he's dead.

What can we say or do under such delusions? We must, though, stand by our remaining close friends and support them through these perilous times. My best to all.

[Zeitghost]

7. These policies

Apply to breakthrough cases in the vaxed population as well.

[CrispyQ]

6. I wish someone would do a story on the hospital bills some of the survivors are facing.

Maybe it would wake some of these dumb asses up.

[dalton99a]

8. That ought to make them pay attention.

Stupid fuckers