The federal public health emergency for COVID-19 ended on May 11, bringing changes to health care and public benefits. In this video, FactCheck.org teamed up with Factchequeado to answer some questions about how this might affect you.
The end of the public health emergency is not the end of all pandemic-related benefits, so many people won’t feel a difference immediately, as Anne Sosin, a policy fellow studying rural health equity at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth, told us.
Overall, the “widest ranging impact” directly resulting from the end of the public health emergency, according to KFF, is the rise in the cost of COVID-19 tests. People on Medicaid can still get free at-home tests through September 2024, but the tests are no longer covered by insurers for most other people.
The cost of vaccines and treatments won’t change immediately. However, the government supply of vaccines is only expected to last through the summer or early fall.
Many of the telehealth benefits for people on Medicaid and Medicare were made permanent or extended until the end of 2024.
For more details, see our story “Q&A on the End of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency,” which, like the video, is available in English and Spanish.
This video is the first in a series of videos that will be jointly produced by FactCheck.org and Factchequeado, a media outlet that counters Spanish-language misinformation in the U.S. Latino community, to provide accurate information on health issues.
Editor’s note: SciCheck’s articles providing accurate health information and correcting health misinformation are made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation has no control over FactCheck.org’s editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.