The White House has warned that a Covid program that reimburses doctors and medical providers the cost of testing, treating and vaccinating the uninsured is set to expire.
The program that has been critical to ensuring that the uninsured have equal access to Covid-related care is fading out at a time when, and as states and cities wind down pandemic restrictions. But that shouldn't mean that government funding is no longer necessary to help the uninsured, health care advocates and public health policy experts say.
"When you have the time and space to breathe, that's when you prepare and make sure everyone's being taken care of, not when more and more people are dying every day," said Dr. Michael Mina, a former Harvard University epidemiologist and now the chief science officer for eMed, a startup that sells at-home Covid tests.
Dr. Howard Forman, a professor of public health at the Yale School of Medicine, said people hit the hardest by a loss of Covid funding will be"those who have the greatest risks, due to lower resources and less access to usual care.
And without ongoing immediate funding, senior administration officials this week painted a bleak picture in the nation's fight against Covid. They warned the federal government would not have adequate resources to purchase enough booster doses for all people or there would be shortages if a new variant-specific vaccine is needed; it won't be able to buy additional oral antiviral pills beyond the 20 million already secured, as well as additional monoclonal antibody treatments, which are being shipped to states and expected to run out as soon as late May; and it would have to scale back the purchase of treatments meant for...
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