The Biden administration has announced it will extend the national Covid emergencies through May 11, the White House said on Monday.
The public health national emergencies were declared by President Donald Trump in January 2020, and have been renewed every three months. The current national health emergency and the public health emergency are now set to expire on March 1 and April 11.
In December, a group of 25 Republican governors, including Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, wrote a letter to Biden, requesting he end the emergency in April, at the end of the current declared emergency.
“We ask that you allow the PHE [Public Health Emergency] to expire in April and provide states with much needed certainty well in advance of its expiration,” the governors wrote.
The emergency is negatively affecting states, primarily by artificially growing the number of people under Medicaid (both traditional and expanded populations), regardless of whether individuals continue to be eligible under the program, the governors wrote.
“While the enhanced federal match provides some assistance to blunt the increasing costs due to higher enrollment numbers in our Medicaid programs, states are required to increase our non-federal match to adequately cover all enrollees and cannot disenroll members from the program unless they do so voluntarily. Making the situation worse, we know that a considerable number of individuals have returned to employer sponsored coverage or are receiving coverage through the individual market, and yet states still must still account and pay for their Medicaid enrollment in our non-federal share. This is costing states hundreds of millions of dollars,” the governors said in their letter.
“It is time we move on from the pandemic and get back to life as normal,” the governors wrote.
But Biden wants to extend the emergency for another month so hospitals and health officials can prepare for a return for normalcy.
The White House wrote that an abrupt end to the emergency declarations would create wide-ranging chaos and uncertainty throughout the health care system — for states, for hospitals and doctors’ offices, and, most importantly, for tens of millions of Americans.
“During the PHE, the Medicaid program has operated under special rules to provide extra funding to states to ensure that tens of millions of vulnerable Americans kept their Medicaid coverage during a global pandemic. In December, Congress enacted an orderly wind-down of these rules to ensure that patients did not lose access to care unpredictably and that state budgets don’t face a radical cliff. If the PHE were suddenly terminated, it would sow confusion and chaos into this critical wind-down. Due to this uncertainty, tens of millions of Americans could be at risk of abruptly losing their health insurance, and states could be at risk of losing billions of dollars in funding,” the White House wrote.
The lifting of the national emergencies also means an end to the Title 42 provision that has allowed the United States to quickly remove illegal immigrants from the country.
“While the Administration has attempted to terminate the Title 42 policy and continues to support an orderly lifting of those restrictions, Title 42 remains in place because of orders issued by the Supreme Court and a district court in Louisiana. Enactment of H.R. 382 [a bill offered by Republicans in the House] would lift Title 42 immediately, and result in a substantial additional inflow of migrants at the Southwest border,” the White House said.
“The Administration supports an orderly, predictable wind-down of Title 42, with sufficient time to put alternative policies in place. But if H.R. 382 becomes law and the Title 42 restrictions end precipitously, Congress will effectively be requiring the Administration to allow thousands of migrants per day into the country immediately without the necessary policies in place,” the White House said.
Biden opposes two Republican bills that would terminate both of the emergency declarations. Neither bills [H.R. 382 and H.J. Res. 7] are expected to pass the Senate, which is controlled by the Democrats.
