Fewer than 1 in 10 Americans now consider COVID-19 to be a crisis, according to the latest Axios-Ipsos survey. But while the public has moved on, the Biden administration has not, extending the two-year-old COVID-19 public health emergency for another 90 days.
In light of positive trends, the emergency should be allowed to expire in July. In any event, lawmakers should decide what to do about the temporary policies put in place to fight the disease. Some, like telehealth access, should be maintained. Others, like the temporary expansion of Medicaid, should be allowed to expire.
Thanks to temporary policies adopted by Congress early in the pandemic, the number of Americans enrolled in Medicaid, the joint state-federal health care program for the indigent, swelled by more than 20 percent, or nearly 15 million people, bringing total enrollment above 80 million for the first time.
An estimated six million of them are ineligible under the program’s permanent, pre-pandemic rules, but the states are prohibited from disenrolling them until the federal emergency is allowed to expire.
The full article can be found in The Hill.
