We all wish we were, but that’s not the reality. You know, the end of the public health emergency doesn’t mean that we are done with this virus. But do you have a concern as an epidemiologist that we might see a resurgence if people aren’t vaccinated or if vaccines wear off or if people aren’t being tested? What’s your take on this? You know, I know that the federal government is saying that this is the end of the pandemic emergency. Does this mean that if you were uninsured in Texas, you really won’t have access to 100% coverage for products and services related to COVID? You know, Texas has a large number of uninsured people. Also, hospitals, which had gotten an increase in funding because of the pandemic, that is going away. So millions of people lose coverage from Medicaid. States actually could have begun rolling that back on April 1. In fact, it’s estimated during the pandemic, one in four people in the United States had Medicaid coverage. One is the people who were able to get on Medicaid, who for insurance, who were not able to before. Yeah, well, there’s a couple issues there. Is that going to be cut off all of a sudden or what? What about federal funding? I know that states were supposed to receive what federal matched funds for for COVID related services and products. You know, hopefully they’ll still be some options for free vaccines. Now, maybe you can get vaccine at health departments. However, if you don’t have insurance, again, the government has bought a number of vaccines and so those will be free until that supply runs out and then we’ll just have to see. Vaccines for people who have insurance will still be free because of ACA. What about vaccines and those sorts of certain treatments? For people are not insured, they can get kits from the federal government until those run out. It will depend on your insurance whether you have to do cost sharing or not. If you have insurance, you can still get them. But what people are going to see is that those at-home test kits will no longer be free. Texas Standard: So what sorts of things in the health care system that people have gotten used to in the last few years will now change because of the ending of this order?Ĭatherine Troisi: Yeah, it’s actually very complicated because although this public health emergency order is ending, there are some things that have been codified in law, so they aren’t changing some things that relate to other orders that aren’t ending now – end of 2024, they’ll be ending. This transcript has been edited light for clarity: Listen to the story above or read the transcript below. So what are the changes for health care that many Texans may be unaware of?Ĭatherine Troisi is an infectious diseases epidemiologist with UTHealth Houston School of Public Health and joined Texas Standard to discuss the changes. That’s why Title 42 was instituted.īut at the end of Thursday, that order ended not just Title 42, but the pandemic emergency. This order allowed federal departments to respond to the pandemic and enact policies to help keep the virus at bay. government declared a public health emergency as COVID-19 spread around the world.
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