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Ending the Covid-19 Public Health Emergency

It's More Than Just A Declaration

Joan DeMartin

Feb 19, 2023

Can “We Do This” without the full array of government support?

“The White House said that the nation needed an orderly transition out of the public health emergency, which has been in effect for all of President Biden’s time in office.” The New York Times, February 3, 2023

Earlier this month, the Biden Administration announced that it would end the Covid-19 Public Health Emergency along with a second, Covid-19 National Emergency on May 11, 2023, by letting the declarations expire together. The Covid Public Health Emergency was first issued in January 2020 and has been renewed every 90 days since, as has the second National Emergency declaration related to Covid-19, initially issued in March 2020. Combined, these emergency declarations allowed the federal government to provide states with funds necessary to deal with overwhelmed hospitals, provided vital supplies like masks and ventilators, expanded medicaid insurance to a greater number of people and created an expedited development and rollout of testing, vaccines and treatments like the anti-viral drug, Paxlovid, for example, and provided these preventative and treatment measures free to everyone, including the uninsured.

Rather than abruptly end the Covid PHE, the Administration is choosing to allow the states and millions of Americans time to prepare for the withdrawal of federal money and other support, and to help states, hospitals and private doctors navigate what is hopefully a different, less dangerous phase of the pandemic.

Of course, there has been backlash to this slower, transitional approach, and some members of Congress introduced HR 382 titled “The Pandemic is Over Act”, which proposes to immediately end the two emergency declarations rather than wait until May. In fact, Rep. Steve Scalise (R, Louisiana), the House Majority Leader, recently said in support of HR 382:

The days of the Biden administration being able to hide behind Covid to waste billions of taxpayer dollars on their unrelated, radical agenda are over.

Statements like the quote above by Representative Scalise are why it’s important to know the facts. I’ve pulled together a few changes that the American people, particularly the poor and uninsured, will experience now through the end of the emergency declarations in May, and beyond.

— First up is the federal statute and regulation that allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services to issue health-related national emergency declarations.

And this is the text of the Covid-19 National Emergency Declaration issued on January 31, 2020, plus a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) detailed explanation of what the federal government can and cannot do under a public health emergency.

Note that these laws establish a Department of Treasury Fund where emergency monies are kept and dispensed, and include a specific list of how the Secretary of Health and Human Services can use these funds. I don’t see “radical agenda” listed.

— This detailed summary from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) explains exactly which programs and access to services will and will not change with the ending of the PHE.

Overall, the widest ranging impact from the end of the public health emergency will likely be higher costs for COVID tests – both at-home tests and those performed by clinicians. As many Americans delay or go without needed care due to cost, the end of free COVID tests could have broad implications for the people’s ability to get timely COVID diagnoses or prevent transmission.

This article from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities lays out the cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as Food Stamps, the will begin this March for recipients in approximately 32 remaining states, D.C. and other U.S. territories. Under the Covid-19 National Health Emergency Order, SNAP recipients received an average of an extra $95 each month per single person household in “emergency allotments” (EA’s) in an effort to address “rising food insecurity” and provide economic stimulus.

An extra monthly allotment of $95 for a single person, for example, in addition to the basic monthly allotment can buy a lot of fresh food, even with current inflation, and allows folks to spend that $95 on other bills.

The end of the temporary EAs will be a significant change that will increase food hardship for many individuals and families, given the modest amount of basic SNAP benefits and high recent inflation in food prices. Without the EAs, SNAP benefits will average only about $6.10 per person per day in 2023.

This graph shows how much money single-person households and families will lose when the Emergency Allotments (EA’s) end.

— Finally for this evening, a blog post from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities written in the spring of 2021, also discusses the SNAP Emergency Allotments. It demonstrates the absurdity and tortured logic often used to justify the lengths some public officials will go, to not help even the poorest of the poor, even during a public health emergency. Apparently, the lowest income people otherwise eligible for food stamps were originally excluded from receiving the extra emergency allotments for a full year, by a contorted Trump administration policy interpreting the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, passed in March 2020.

The Trump Administration, however, declared that the law limited the size of a household’s total SNAP benefit — that is, its regular benefit plus the emergency allotment — to the maximum SNAP benefit level. Under this interpretation, the 40 percent of SNAP households that already qualified for the maximum benefit didn’t qualify for an emergency allotment [they were already receiving the maximum SNAP benefit because they had little to no income and so qualified for the maximum amount]. By definition, the households left out were those with the lowest incomes.

Wow! Yet another Catch-22 of poverty in these United States. Thankfully, the Biden administration corrected this interpretation in April of 2021.

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I’d love to hear your thoughts on the ending of the Covid-19 National Health Emergency. Should it be ended immediately? Phased out this May? Or something else? Please leave your ideas in the Comment Section below!