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Chicago, IL, USA - October 18 2021: BinaxNOW Covid-19 Antigen Self Test. Results in 15 minutes at home.

The Devil is in the Details with Biden’s Free COVID Testing Plan

David Simon Leave a comment

By David A. Simon

Yesterday, President Biden announced a new requirement that private insurers must reimburse purchases of at-home COVID-19 tests.

This represents a significant departure from current policy, which only requires insurance companies to pay for testing at the direction of a healthcare provider. The new policy has yet to take effect — the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will release formal guidance for private insurers by January 15th.

Removing the need for clinician approval to access free COVID-19 testing is a noteworthy step; however, the new policy raises a host of questions that remain to be addressed, which are discussed briefly below.

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Burgess Hill, West Sussex – 12 January, 2021 Covid-19 home PCR self-test kit.

Pandemic Diagnostics: Present and Future Implications of Self-Testing Reimbursement

David Simon Leave a comment

By David A. Simon

The process of diagnosing a disease or condition, including detection of SARS-CoV-2 infection, is changing.

Consumers now can not only collect their specimen from their living room couch, but they can test it while watching Netflix. Sampling, testing, and obtaining results all can be done in a patient’s home.

For communicable diseases like COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection, at-home testing has considerable public health benefits. In addition to being more convenient than traditional diagnostics, self-testing can substantially reduce or eliminate the risk that infected individuals will spread the virus en route to a testing site.

This innovation has been spurred, in part, by a powerful incentive: the federal government has all-but guaranteed reimbursement for these tests.

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