National panel will explore requiring free Covid tests

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force will discuss recommending Covid-19 screening, the first step in requiring insurers to permanently cover the tests at no cost to patients.

The national panel of experts will convene and “determine whether and how Covid-19 screening might be considered within the Task Force’s scope,” chair Michael Barry wrote in a letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) exclusively shared with STAT.

Under the Affordable Care Act, insurers are required to cover tests, screening, and other preventive medicines like HIV PrEP drugs that the task force strongly recommends.

All public and private insurers were required to cover Covid tests at no cost during the public health emergency. But since the emergency ended more than two months ago, several large insurers have limited coverage of at-home tests or introduced copays on lab tests.

Warren and other Democratic senators wrote to Barry earlier this month pressing him to convene the panel and recommend coverage of all Covid-19 tests, pointing to these growing gaps.

“While the Covid-19 public health emergency is officially over, [we] understand the need to retain access to tests and timely treatment for Covid-19,” Barry wrote to the senators.

However he reminded them that “our recommendations only apply to people who do not have any signs or symptoms of disease. We are exploring how testing for Covid-19 might fit within the parameters like these that govern the Task Force’s work.”

The panel’s scope could be further constrained by an ongoing court battle challenging its authority to require coverage.

A Texas federal judge in March struck that provision down on the argument that the task force, a volunteer panel, is not appointed by the Health and Human Services secretary, who is Senate-confirmed and empowered to make committees. The same judge, Reed O’Connor, ruled last year that religious groups did not have to cover PrEP and in 2018 attempted to strike down the entire ACA law, before appeals led to the Supreme Court’s 2021 reversal of the decision.

An appeals court judge in May issued an injunction on the ruling while it considers the case.