HHS to maintain COVID-19 public health emergency past January

The U.S. will extend the COVID-19 public health emergency past January 11, 2023, CNBC reported Nov. 11.

A 12th extension of the PHE since the first in January 2020 is also likely because of a lack of public statement from HHS warning about a termination. The agency last renewed the PHE Oct. 13 for an additional 90 days to Jan. 11, 2023 — it also told states it would provide a notice 60 days before if it did decide to end it, or Nov. 11.

The PHE allows the country to continue operating under pandemic-era policies, which led to a complete overhaul of telehealth and who can use it, fast-tracked approvals of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, and preserved healthcare coverage for millions of Medicaid beneficiaries nationwide.

Eleven states also still have coinciding public health emergency orders in place.

As of now, Medicare telehealth flexibilities will end 151 days after the PHE expires. In July, the House passed The Advancing Telehealth Beyond COVID-19 Act, but the legislation must still be approved by the Senate for Medicare patients to continue using telehealth through 2024.

"It's not that we necessarily want to continue the PHE for a long period of time," Nancy Foster, AHA's vice president of quality and patient safety, told Becker's in October. "What has not yet happened is fully thinking through how to unwind some of the [telehealth] flexibilities we currently have, and how to perhaps make permanent some of the others."

In addition, the end of the PHE will trigger a Medicaid redetermination process that will cause a major disenrollment of beneficiaries. Over the course of about a year, HHS estimates up to 15 million people could lose health coverage.

Payers are prepping for the redetermination period, as they expect to lose Medicaid members and hope to switch some to ACA coverage. 

With the Inflation Reduction Act's extension of ACA premium tax credits through the end of 2025, the nation's largest insurers have all recently announced plans to majorly expand exchange offerings in 2023, including UnitedHealthcare, Elevance, Aetna, Cigna and Centene.

The extension of the federal emergency past January may have been unexpected for insurers, as UnitedHealth Group executives told investors Oct. 14 they thought the PHE would end in January. 

"Our tailwinds will be weighed against one known headwind, and that is the membership attrition and related impacts on our Medicaid business as eligibility redeterminations are conducted over the course of the next year," Elevance Health's CFO John Gallina told investors Oct. 19.

The extension also comes amid uncertainty around public health as winter looms. New Omicron strains — dubbed "escape variants" for their immune evasiveness — have become the dominant strains in the U.S., accounting for 40 percent of all cases in the week ending Nov. 12.

Daily cases in the country are expected to grow 39 percent from Nov. 3-17. Hospital admissions trends are expected to remain stable or be more uncertain, with 1,300 to 7,300 new admissions likely reported on Nov. 25, according to the CDC. As of Nov. 4, the nation's seven-day average of new hospital admissions was 3,273.


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