- Insurance companies waived cost-sharing for COVID-19 testing and treatment in 2020 to help curtail the spread of the coronavirus.
- In 2021, most insurance companies are expected to drop these waivers, leaving their subscribers to pay a large portion of COVID-19 testing and treatment costs.
- Researchers suggest patients’ out-of-pocket burden could be substantial should insurers stop granting the waivers.
Being hospitalized for COVID-19 will most likely get more costly for the patient, not their insurance company.
That’s because most insurance plans are expected to drop their cost-sharing waivers, which have prevented many people from being inundated with medical debt after being hospitalized, sometimes for weeks, with COVID-19.
The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated in November that less than half of plan enrollees who are fully insured have coverage that waives cost-sharing for COVID-19 treatment through the end of the year.
Mary Ann Hart, RN, program director for the graduate program in health administration at Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts, said cost-sharing waivers have helped protect public health by encouraging people to find out if they contracted the virus and limiting the spread.
“All types of cost-sharing — copays, deductibles, and coinsurance — discourage people from getting healthcare by creating financial barriers to care that are borne by the insured consumer,” Hart told Healthline. “By waiving cost-sharing for COVID-19 testing and treatment, insurers are making it more likely that their subscribers get tested and treated for COVID-19 earlier on in their infection and illness.”
And testing and treatments were the main part of people’s experience with COVID-19 and the U.S. healthcare system.
The United States has a ready supply of three vaccines that have been given emergency authorization by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after trials have shown that all are highly effective at preventing COVID-19 diseases that are severe enough to require hospitalization.
The availability of those vaccines quickly changed the course of the pandemic.
Source: healthline