Biden COVID-19 Plan Vague on Health Coverage Details

Here's what the Biden administration says about the executive orders it will use to handle the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Establishing the National Pandemic Testing Board and Ensuring a Sustainable Public Health Workforce for COVID-19 and Other Biological Threats."

This order sets up a COVID-19 Pandemic Testing Board, which will be chaired by a new COVID-19 response coordinator and that official's designees. The members of the board will come from government agencies designated by the president.

The first COVID-19 response coordinator is Jeff Zients, a former management consultant who may be best known for leading to the effort to help HealthCare.gov, the federal government's Affordable Care Act public exchange enrollment and administration system, overcome technical problems.

One administration goal is to ensure "a clarity of messaging about the use of tests and insurance coverage," according to the text of the order.

The order states that the Treasury secretary, the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the secretary of Labor will work with the COVID-19 response coordinator to "facilitate the provision of COVID-19 testing free of charge to those who lack comprehensive health insurance" and "clarify group health plans' and health insurance issuers' obligations to provide coverage for COVID-19 testing."

"Improving and Expanding Access to Care and Treatments for COVID-19."

In this order, the Biden administration directs the HHS secretary to evaluate the COVID-19 uninsured program, and "take any available steps to promote access to treatments and clinical care for those without adequate coverage, to support safety-net providers in delivering such treatments and clinical care, and to make the program easy to use and accessible for patients and providers, with information about the program widely disseminated."

The administration also directs the HHS secretary to "evaluate Medicare, Medicaid, group health plans, and health insurance issuers, and take any available steps to promote insurance coverage for safe and effective COVID-19 treatments and clinical care."

"Ensuring an Equitable Pandemic Response and Recovery."

This order sets up a COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force that will help other federal agencies "assess pandemic response plans and policies to determine whether personal protective equipment, tests, vaccines, therapeutics, and other resources have been or will be allocated equitably," and address the "disproportionately high rates of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and mortality in certain communities," along with "any barriers that have restricted access to preventive measures, treatment, and other health services for high-risk populations."

"Ensuring a Data-Driven Response to COVID-19 and Future High-Consequence Public Health Threats."

In this order, officials talk about efforts to improve and expand efforts to collect and analyze pandemic data, in part to look at how the pandemic is affecting communities of color and other high-risk groups.

In the plan document, outside of the Data-Driven Response executive order, officials say one data goal, for commercially insured populations, will be for HHS to "support efforts by insurers, pharmacies, labs, state immunization offices and other entities to maximize the availability of data by race, ethnicity, geography, disability and other sociodemographic factors, as feasible."

— Read White House COVID-19 Trackers Repeat Warning About U.S. Variants, on ThinkAdvisor.

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