Jeff Smedsrud (Credit: Pivot Health)
An insurance industry veteran who helps match consumers with short-term health insurance coverage says he believes that most of the issuers in that market are now providing full COVID-19 testing benefits.
Jeff Smedsrud, the chief executive officer of Pivot Health, an organization that helps consumers buy supplemental health insurance products, and alternatives to major medical insurance, talked about short-term health insurance issuers' responsible to the COVID-19 pandemic in a written commentary.
Short-term health insurance issuers have had a tense relationship with some issuers of major medical insurance, and with defenders of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) major medical insurance framework.
Under ACA rules, insurers must sell and price coverage without using information about people's health; cover at least about 60% of the actuarial value of a standardized "essential health benefits" (EHB) package; cover the products and services in the EHB package without imposing annual or lifetime benefits limits on coverage for those products and services; and cover a standard package of preventive services without imposing deductibles, co-payment requirements or other cost-sharing requirements on the patients.
A provision in the ACA exempts short-term health insurance policies and other "excepted benefits" policies from the ACA coverage and underwriting standards. In most states that allow the sale of short-term health insurance, issuers can use medical underwriting and take a free-form approach to benefit design.
Some critics of short-term health insurance, such as the authors of an article that ran March 18 on the Health Affairs blog, have argued that short-term health policies are "junk" coverage and will leave the insureds with large COVID-19 testing bills.
