With COVID Testing Set to Surge, Insurers Fret About Costs

Oct 22
Oct 22, 2021

While two separate administrations have now specified that health insurers must cover, without cost sharing, all COVID-19 tests used for individual diagnostic purposes, one trade group says that health plans are still getting stuck with the bill for workplace-related testing — and the problem is only going to get worse.

In an Oct. 5 letter to CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the Alliance of Community Health Plans (ACHP) says its member organizations are already seeing testing costs for 2021 surpass levels for full-year 2020, and that for many members, “August was their highest month of tests paid for throughout the entire pandemic, with September data likely to continue the trend.”
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Leslie Small

Leslie has been working in journalism since 2009 and reporting on the health care industry since 2014. She has covered the many ups and downs of the Affordable Care Act exchanges, the failed health insurer mega-mergers, and hundreds of other storylines spanning subjects such as Medicaid managed care, Medicare Advantage, employer-sponsored insurance, and prescription drug coverage. As the managing editor of Health Plan Weekly and Radar on Drug Benefits, she writes and edits for both publications while overseeing a small team of reporters who also focus on the managed care sector. Before joining AIS Health, she was a senior editor for the e-newsletter Fierce Health Payer, and she started her career as a copy editor at multiple local newspapers. She graduated with a dual degree in journalism and political science from Penn State University.