Biden to Require Insurers to Cover At-Home COVID-19 Tests

The Biden administration will soon require insurers to cover at-home COVID-19 tests. 

Beginning on January 15, insurance companies will be required to cover up to eight tests per month for each individual, the Daily Caller reports. This means a family of four, for example, would qualify to reimburse 32 tests per month. 

The policy allows Americans to either acquire free testing kits through their insurance, or present receipts for tests to their insurers for reimbursement. 

“This is all part of our overall strategy to ramp up access to easy-to-use, at-home tests at no cost,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement Monday. “By requiring private health plans to cover people’s at-home tests, we are further expanding Americans’ ability to get tests for free when they need them.” 

Because of a nationwide shortage in available tests, the Biden administration has faced increased scrutiny. Reporters questioned White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on why the administration has taken so long to increase testing. 

“There has been a massive surge in testing,” she said. “There has been an unprecedented demand for tests. So what we have done over the course of the last few weeks, even before that, is the president quadrupled our testing capacity since this summer, we opened 20,000 sites across the country, and we have also opened additional federal sites, including one in D.C. only recently.” 

“If you look to a year ago, there were no tests, or maybe one depending on the timeline, that was available on the market. Now we have nine. If you look to about a year ago, there was about 900,000 or maybe slightly higher tests that were being issued every day. Now we’re at about 10 or 11 million. 300 million tests are done in this country every month. So there’s enormous progress being made,” she added.